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Saturday June 24, 10:31 PM2ND LD: Worker exposed to radioactive waste at Aomori nuke plant(Kyodo) _ (EDS: ADDING AMOUNT OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE)A 19-year-old worker on Saturday was exposed to a small amount of radioactive waste at a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, its operator said. The worker has so far developed no health problems and the exposure did not affect the environment around the plant, Japan's first full-fledged spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility, operated by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. The incident followed the exposure of another worker at the plant in May. The radioactivity was detected in the man's nostrils and the amount may have surpassed 2 millisievert, the minimum level for mandatory reporting to a local government, the company said. The maximum allowable amount of radioactive exposure for a person not working a nuclear-related job is 1 millisievert per year. Japan Nuclear Fuel said it discovered the exposure shortly after the worker finished moving plutonium and other materials from bags to a measuring device with a pair of tweezers as part of a material analyzing process. The worker did the work in a building that constitutes the nuclear fuel cycle complex, located on the northern tip of Japan's largest main island of Honshu. The job did not require employees to wear a mask, it said. An official of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it will urge Japan Nuclear Fuel to determine the cause and check whether the company has learned lessons from last month's incident. The plant began trial operations to extract plutonium and uranium from spent nuclear fuel in late March. In April, about 40 liters of water containing plutonium and other radioactive materials was leaked at the plant but no radiation was reported to have been released into the atmosphere. Japan Nuclear Fuel plans to put the reprocessing plant into full operation in August 2007 to reprocess some 800 tons of spent nuclear fuel a year into more than 4 tons of plutonium that will be used as uranium-and-plutonium mixed fuel at Japanese nuclear power plants. The Rokkasho plant is Japan's first commercial reprocessing plant. Japan Nuclear Fuel is a national-policy organization established by Japan's nine regional utility firms and 84 power-related firms. |
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