At a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture, the lighting in a room subject to monitoring work called safeguards conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to prevent nuclear materials from being diverted to nuclear weapons is turned off. However, I found out that monitoring was not possible for a while.
This was reported by the secretariat, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, at the regular meeting of the Nuclear Regulation Authority held on the 22nd.
According to that, it was impossible to monitor the room in the reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, which receives spent nuclear fuel from storage facilities and sends it to the equipment for shearing.
Surveillance cameras are installed in this room to detect the movement of nuclear fuel. However, the IAEA, who saw the video, noticed this and made an inquiry to the Nuclear Regulation Authority this month.
I was planning to leave 3 lights connected to another power board, but the bulbs of all 3 were out, so the old one has been out since 2017, but the warranty It was not communicated to the department in charge of the measures.
All the lights were off for about two hours from around 10:00 a.m. to around noon, and it is said that there was no spent nuclear fuel in this room at that time. We instructed nuclear fuel to investigate the cause and prevent recurrence.
Deputy Chairman Satoru Tanaka sternly pointed out, "This is an event of great concern in terms of safeguards. It is a major event that will lead to a loss of trust in our country, and operators must take it seriously."