(...)The draft plan also urges Japan to continue with its plan to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium despite international concerns about the country's large stockpile of the highly toxic element that can be used to make nuclear weapons.
Japan has 44 tons of plutonium at home and overseas after unsuccessfully pushing to establish a system in which it is extracted from spent fuel rods and then made into hybrid fuel that can be reused. Experts say the stockpile poses a nuclear security threat and raises questions over whether Japan plans to develop nuclear weapons, which the government denies.
Japan also has more than 17,000 tons of spent fuel in cooling pools at its 50 reactors. Some pools are expected to be full in several years, and the spent fuel is expected to be moved to a dry cask facility just completed in northern Japan.
Japan has no final nuclear waste repository, not even a potential site. (...)
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