On 26 December 2022, Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited announced another delay in completion of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant. The plant is already 25 years late; completion was originally scheduled for 1997 (in 2020 the startup of the plant was delayed until 2022). It is now projected to be completed in mid-2024 with plutonium-separation operations to begin a year later. The delays are significant for the accumulation and use of separated plutonium in Japan.
According to Japan’s Federation of Electric Power Companies (FEPC), if and when the reprocessing plant operates at its design capacity of 800 tons of spent fuel per year, it will separate 6.6 tons of plutonium annually. This could lead to a rapid increase of Japan’s stock of separated plutonium, which amounted to 45.8 tons as of the end of 2021: 36.5 tons in France and UK and 9.3 tons in Japan.