The total cost for scrapping the nation's nuclear power facilities -- excluding Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plants and other facilities under construction -- is estimated to be about 6.72 trillion yen, according to a tally by The Yomiuri Shimbun.
The assessment only includes dismantlements of nuclear power facilities for which the cost can currently be estimated.
Among these estimates, the cost for closing a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant now being built by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (JNFL) in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, accounts for the largest amount at 1.6 trillion yen.
The cost for decommissioning 53 commercial nuclear reactors is estimated to total about 3.58 trillion yen, for an average at 57.7 billion yen per reactor. Of the 53 reactors, 19 reactors are scheduled or are likely to be scrapped.
The amount of low-level radioactive waste, which excludes spent nuclear fuel, generated during the process of decommissioning the 53 reactors is expected to be a total of 487,140 tons, for an average of 9,191 tons per reactor.
The tally does not include the assessment for scrapping nuclear power plants that are under construction and the Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant crippled by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 -- which is difficult to estimate a figure for at this point.
The costs for closing nuclear power facilities that are not for commercial use could total about 3.66 trillion yen. Of them, the costs to decommission 79 nuclear facilities owned by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency have been estimated to total about 1.9 trillion yen, which includes 770 billion yen for closing a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the village of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture.
The JNFL said estimated decommissioning costs total 1.73 trillion yen for five facilities including the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho.
The scale of a reprocessing plant is so large that the amount of potential radioactive waste could increase in quantity, and thus the cost to decommission such a facility becomes enormous.
In the law on nuclear reactors and others, which was revised in 2017, nuclear power plant operators are obliged to release their enforcement policies for scrapping nuclear power facilities by the end of 2018 -- such as the estimated costs to decommission facilities and the amount of radioactive waste that would be generated following the dismantlement.
The International Atomic Energy Agency submitted a report to the Japanese government in 2016, in which it requested that policies for decommissioning nuclear facilities be released.
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