The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant has been shut down because of severe weather conditions.
BBC: Sellafield shutdown: Severe weather closes nuclear site
The building of a reprocessing plant at Rokkashomura, in Aomori prefecture, has been disappointingly slow.
It follows a minor incident at France's Flamanville nuclear reprocessing plant, less than 30 miles (50km) away.
However, there are two more things that you need: you need an enrichment plant and a reprocessing plant.
The government must choose between giving Sellafield a breathing space and bringing forward the closure of the reprocessing plant.
Councils in the west of the county have expressed an interest in taking waste from the Sellafield reprocessing plant.
BBC: Lake District National Park may host nuclear waste site
Councils in west Cumbria have expressed an interest in hosting an underground repository for waste from the Sellafield reprocessing plant.
BBC: Lake District National Park fears over nuclear waste store
In Japan in 1999, an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction at a uranium-reprocessing plant killed two employees and spewed radioactive neutrons over the countryside.
Tony Morris was stranded in his car for eight hours as he tried to get to the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant for a meeting.
However, research by Dr Louise Parker of the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, published last year, suggested that workers at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria had higher than average chances of fathering a stillborn child, or one born with defects.
The answer lies in its plant for reprocessing spent fuel, built partly to take used fuel from Germany and Japan (which largely paid for its construction) and partly to produce the plutonium that was once expected to be needed as fuel for fast-breeder reactors, in Britain and elsewhere.
Japan had a reprocessing center in central Japan, called Tokai Mura, that harvested roughly seven tons of plutonium before the plant was shut in 2007.
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