Among the best examples of the implementation of IAEA safeguards to commercial nuclear facilities are those found in the Japanese industrial complexes located in the coastal villages of Tokai-mura in the Naka-gun District, Ibaraki-ken Prefecture, and Rokkasho-mura in the Kamikita-gun District, Aomori-ken Prefecture.

The Tokai and Rokkasho industrial complexes each include several of the manufacturing facilities required to support the Japanese nuclear energy industry, which is based primarily on light water reactor (LWR) technolo­gies. The trend is that Japan is to moving toward a nuclear fuel cycle program similar to that practiced by France. These industrial complexes include uranium conversion, uranium enrichment, uranium re-conversion, uranium oxide fuel fabrication, nuclear power generation, spent fuel repro­cessing, mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication, interim spent fuel storage, and radioactive waste storage facilities (IAEA 2009). Our focus here is on the spent fuel reprocessing and MOX fuel fabrication facilities, which standout as closely integrated facilities in an already highly integrated industry.

The basic function of a spent fuel reprocessing plant is to effect separa­tions between uranium, plutonium, and fission products. Fission products and fuel assembly hardware ultimately report to waste, while uranium and plutonium report to separate purified process streams as nitrates. A portion of the uranium stream is converted into oxide that is returned to the process path for uranium oxide fuel production. The remaining portion of the uranium stream is mixed with the plutonium stream and the two metals are co-converted into a mixed oxide that becomes the feedstock for MOX fuel production. There are many technical variants of aqueous reprocessing and only the high-level common goals are described here. From this simple description it is easy to understand why such technologies attract interna­tional attention and require the application of IAEA safeguard principles, practices, and technologies.

In terms of Japan’s national reprocessing capability, the “pilot scale” Tokai Reprocessing Plant (TRP) is the predecessor of the “commercial scale” Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant (RRP). Construction of the TRP began in 1971 and commercial reprocessing operations continued intermit­tently from September 1977 to March 2006, at which time commercial reprocessing operations were ceased. The TRP was operated from its incep­tion until 1988 by the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC), from 1988 to 2005 by the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC), and from 2005 to present by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA). During its nearly 30 years of commercial operation, the TRP processed over 1130 MT spent fuel and achieved a maximum realized annual capacity in 1995 of approximately 95.7 MT spent fuel (Yamamura et al. 2008). The MOX product from the TRP was used to make fuels in the co-located Plutonium Fuel Fabrication Facility (PFFF) and the Plutonium Fuel Production Facility (PFPF). The TRP presently fulfills the role of a research and development facility for the JAEA. Operations include reprocessing MOX fuel from the Advanced Test Reactor Fugen.

As a result of a history of exceptional cooperation between Japan and the IAEA, the TRP served, per se, as a research and development labora­tory for many of the IAEA inspection and verification techniques used at TRP, RRP, and other international sites.

Construction of the RRP began in 1993 and commercial reprocessing operations are scheduled to begin in 2009. The RRP is operated by Japanese Nuclear Fuel Limited (JNFL). The purpose of the RRP is to continue and expand the commercial reprocessing operations formerly conducted at the TRP. The design annual capacity is 800 MT spent fuel containing approxi­mately 8 MT plutonium. The MOX product from the RRP will report to the JNFL MOX Fuel Fabrication Plant (J-MOX), which is scheduled to begin commercial operation in 2012 or later.

The latest safeguards technologies are being incorporated into the design and construction of the RRP (Johnson et al. 2001, Iwamoto et al. 2006, Durst et al. 2007). The continuous measurement and analytical technologies include accurate tank level and volume measurement (Hosoma et al. 1993) and plutonium and uranium concentration measurement via X-ray fluores­cence (XRF) and hybrid k-edge densitometry (Bean 2007). The engineered safeguards systems used to monitor, track, and verify the flow of nuclear materials through the RRP are numerous, complex, and highly integrated. Included are such systems as the Integrated Head-End Verification System (IHVS), Near Real Time Accountancy (NRTA) System, Interim Inventory Verification (IIV) System, Automatic Sampling Authenticated System (ASAS), Spent Fuel Transfer Pool Video (FTPV) System, Solution Measurement and Monitoring System (SMMS), Hull Measurement and Monitoring System (HMMS), and Vitrification Wastes Coincidence Counter (VWCC) (Johnson et al. 2001, Iwamoto et al. 2006, Durst et al. 2007, Yamamura et al. 2008).