Nuclear waset cargo arrives for 50-year storage in Japan

A shipment of nearly 100 tons of nuclear waste generated by Japanese power plants and processed in France arrived by boat in northern Japan today for long-term storage, officials said.

A shipment of nearly 100 tons of nuclear waste generated by Japanese power plants and processed in France arrived by boat in northern Japan today for long-term storage, officials said.

The shipment left the French port of Cherbourg in December, and has been heavily opposed by environmentalists who fear a leak of radioactive material, accident or terrorist attack.

The so-called vitrified waste is the solid material left over after uranium and plutonium is removed from spent nuclear fuel. It was processed by France's state-owned nuclear group, Cogema.

Japan has the processing done in Europe because it lacks the facilities to do so at home.

Resource-poor Japan depends on nuclear power for 30 percent of its electricity needs. Nuclear facilities here, however, have been plagued with accidents, including on in September 1999 that killed two people.

Tuesday's shipment, which arrived at the port of Mutsu-Ogawara, 355 miles north-east of Tokyo, was the sixth - and the largest - to arrive in Japan since the program started in 1995.

The spent nuclear fuel was generated by plants owned by five Japanese power companies, said Kaoru Yoshida, a spokesman for the Federation of Electric Power Companies.

The 94 tons of waste, in 192 canisters, was to be stored at Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd.'s facility in Rokkasho, near Mutsu-Ogawara, for 30 to 50 years, before it is moved to a permanent site, Yoshida said.

"We don't know where the final storage site will be," he said.

About 80 environmentalists held a rally near the port, but there were no clashes between police and protesters, said Ikuo Nakamura, an official of the Aomori prefectural (state) police.

Nakamura said authorities expected more protesters on Wednesday, when the processed waste was to be unloaded from the ship.

Controversy has dogged the shipment. Argentine authorities allowed the ship to pass the tip of South America last month despite a judicial decision that barred the vessel from Argentine waters.

A shipment of MOX fuel, a mixture of uranium oxide and plutonium used in Japan's much-criticized experimental nuclear energy program, left France in January and was expected in Japan next month.