All remaining highly enriched uranium from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's Japan Materials Testing Reactor Critical Assembly has now been returned to the USA. Japan and the USA have been cooperating for many years to repatriate HEU from Japanese research reactors to the USA.
Japan's last high-enriched uranium-fuelled research reactor is to be converted to low-enriched uranium fuel under a new agreement between the US Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration and Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
Nuclear Transport Solutions (NTS), the world s leading transporter of nuclear materials, played a key role in a collaborative effort to remove over 30 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from Japan to the United States earlier this year.
03/01/2021 | News release | Distributed by Public on 02/28/2021 17:23
Japan Research Reactor No. 3 Resumes Operation
1 March, 2021
On February 26, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) announced that it had resumed operation of its research reactor-the Japan Research Reactor No. 3 (JRR-3), with a maximum thermal output of 20 MW-in Tokai Village, Ibaraki Prefecture.
In November 2018, after some four years of safety examinations by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), JAEA obtained approval to make changes to the reactor installation (basic design approval) so as to achieve compatibility with the new regulatory standards.
After seismic retrofitting and other work at the building was completed, the operator successfully carried out a periodic inspection. Full-scale operation available to outside users is scheduled to begin at the end of June.