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Japan firm's MOX nuclear fuel plan approved
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-03-20 14:10

Plans by a Japanese company to use controversial mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel in its nuclear power plants, long stalled by a row over falsified data and safety concerns, were formally approved on Saturday, officials said.

The MOX plutonium-uranium enriched fuel is controversial because critics fear it could potentially be used to build nuclear weapons.

The approval by the government of Fukui prefecture, in western Japan, clears the way for Kansai Electric Power Co Ltd, to use MOX fuel in its No. 3 and No. 4 nuclear reactors at its Takahama plant in Fukui.

Japan, the world's second largest economy, has virtually no domestic sources of crude oil or coal and relies on nuclear power for more than 30 percent of its power needs.

"Approval was conveyed to Kansai Electric today," said an official at Fukui prefecture's atomic energy safety policy division. "Our understanding is that Kansai Electric intends to resume use of MOX fuel in 2007."

Officials at Kansai Electric, Japan's second biggest utility by power output, were not immediately available for comment.

Kansai Electric's plans to use MOX fuel were put on hold late in 1999 after the falsification of quality-control data by Britain's state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) on MOX fuel intended for use at Kansai Electric's reactors came to light.

Details on who would supply the MOX to Kansei Electric were not available.

The revelation of the falsified data came shortly after Japan's worst nuclear accident at a uranium reprocessing plant in September 1999 killed two workers and exposed hundreds of residents to radiation.

 
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