History of Fugen's Role

The Japanese government made the Long-term Plan for Research, Development and Utilization of Nuclear Energy to implement the nuclear policies concretely and systematically. The plan has been reviewed basically in five years and revised in response to both the progress of development and the energy situations in Japan and overseas. Although the basic policy of the plan to focus on plutonium recycling remains unaltered, the role of ATR has shifted under the nuclear fuel strategies. This is due to the changes of surrounding circumstances of ATR such as the international situation of enriched uranium supply and demand, prospects of domestic technologies for enrichment, maturation of LWR technologies, as well as the delay in the demonstration plant project for ATR. Correspondingly, ATR changed its role from plutonium supply reactor based on plutonium self-sustain*1 to plutonium burner*2 and finally to the reactor which complements the shift from plutonium utilization in LWRs to FBR. For all Fugen's design, construction and operation period was diametrically under such transitions, ATR's flexible core characteristics made it possible to correspond to those circumstances without changing the reactor type or core structure.

* 1: Method for maintaining operation only with the supply of natural uranium by using mixture of plutonium, which is produced by operation and natural uranium.

* 2: Method for burning more plutonium than the self-sustained method by mixing plutonium recovered from the reprocessing of spent LWR fuel, with natural uranium etc.

Change in Fugen's Role