Japan likely to scrap Monju fast-breeder nuclear reactor

What??? I can not believe my eyes are seeing this. Finally common sense from a nuclear project. Monju cost too much and did so little.

1 trillion yen ($9.84 billion).

While I am glad they are shutting it down, that is still some serious waste.

Don't worry, they'll waste a trillion yen somewhere to compensate

Nuclear power is highly addictive like nicotine. Looking at how many Japanese smoke, I'm not sure if the nation has the will power to quit it.

Monju costs 20 billion yen (USD$200 million) EVERY year just to sit there and do nothing. Hard to find a better example of a white elephant. According to wiki: 'As of June 2011, the reactor has only generated electricity for one hour since its first testing two decades prior'. It would be hard to beat that record!

It has kept a lot of people employed.

What a cash cow for the company that sold that to the government, no governance at all just spend money... The government needs way more accountability for this, someone needs to get fired or at least apologize for this mess.

Wonderful news and will make a great subject for an investigative documentary, but I guess that goes against the new medial policy....?

These guys could have start 20 years ago and spent that kind of money on developing molten salt reactors which are clean and safe and they would now be world leaders in that technology and could have exported it to the rest of the world. What a complete waste of money which of course governments the world over are famous for.

Monju is really a dinosuar that wasted more than 1 trillion yen of taxpayers. Wonder who takes responsibility about it? Seems nobody.

VERY good news! All too rare in these parts, these is no sense wasting more money on this white elephant, shut her down!

And also start decommissioning other old reactors as well!!

10 billion USD for one hour of total power generation. Wow.

If this boondoggle is indeed finally terminated, that would give the Abe regime a serious plus point. Not enough to offset the negatives but a plus point nonetheless.

While they're at it, the government should also lobby UNESCO to create a category to compliment World Heritage Sites. I would suggest World Folly Sites or World Boondoggle Sites. Japan could have the honor of being the first in a series that should attract entries from around the world.

I'd seriously question the going figure of $9.8 billion for possibly the most complex nuclear plant in the world

Hell the new fish market in Toyosu and the move from Tsukiji cost $5.8 billion (they said - heh, heh).

The total cost of the Monju failure must be included in any ongoing analysis of the cost of nuclear energy in this country as of course the cost that is the tragedy of Fukushima.

No posts here from the normal pro-nuke crowd on how wonderfully cost effective nuclear power is. The clean up cost from Fukushima itself cannot be calculated. Fact is nuclear power is a full-on loser and only the corruption of the LDP, the nuclear plant companies and selected Professors made it happen in Japan for this long. If 1/10 of the money wasted on nuclear plants were spent on renewables Japan would be getting half its energy from clean sources that do not cause cancer in kids like nuclear does.

They had also agreed to keep the nuclear fuel cycle intact and would set up a committee to decide a policy for future fast-breeder development by the end of the year.

Seems you guys haven't read this line. There's your next trillions going...

I don't think Japan should shut down all their nuclear plants.... what if there is a major conflict in the Middle East and oil supply is disrupted?

It's still going to cost a lot. decommissioning reactors costs an arm and a leg. They're supposed to keep the decommisioning costs in escrow from the time the reactor is built, but who knows if this experimental reactor was held to that standard?

@stargame: do you know where nuclear power plants' wastes are shipped and buried? From underground, it travel tool the everywhere in the country. Right now, in US, Hillary is promoting Solar panel for IS energy. as majority ooof states do not have nuclear energy plants. Check Wikipedia to read about solar energy.

Fast-breeder nuclear reactors were technological dinosaurs already 25 years ago. It was back then that Germany decided to scrap its only fast-breeder that had just been built, without starting it up once.

Now imagine one would have listened to one of the many critical voices back then and used the 1 trillion Monju yen for wind energy... it would have been possible to instal more than 10 GW of wind turbines! A wooping more than 30 times of Monju's planned capacity and still more than 2 times Fukushima daiichi, one of the biggest nuclear power plants that have ever been built.

What an unbelievable waste of money, resources and time!

As a resident of Fukui there was a show on local tv the other day with a good looking female announcer holding a big stick giving a PR lecture , dumbed down diagrams included, broadcast of why this type of reactor is worth NOT giving up on. It was so cheap and tacky, and so obviously biased that it was hard not to laugh . But thats about all they think they need to do keep the public in sway. Rural politics is a thing to behold. Like something out the of the 60s.

To the writer who thought Japan should not shut down all it's reactors, you are too late. Japan already did and for about 2 years there were no operating reactors in the country. Now the former 3rd largest nuclear country in the world, now is down to three operating reactors. The Japanese cancelled their energy efficiency program, because it was too effective. Despite no reactors running for two years Japan had a growing economy and stable CO2 emissions. This is because in 2013 alone 16 reactors worth of power were replaced with renewables and efficiency.

Monju is a special kind of monster and more than any other reactor in Japan is important for it to die. Just like all past breeder reactors have died in the US, UK and France. Too expensive, plagued with technical problems and environmental nightmares.

https://funologist.org/2013/05/17/killing-bigger-demons-monju/