TOKYO, Aug. 5 Kyodo, The government's energy agency is planning to sharply increase subsidies to be paid to local governments willing to host a storage site for high-level radioactive waste from nuclear fuels used for power generation, government sources said Saturday.

The budgetary measure, planned from next fiscal year starting April 1, comes after attempts to select a permanent storage site faltered at some local governments after neighboring municipalities lodged opposition out of concern over long-term safety.

The measure would entitle a local government to a maximum subsidy of more than 1 billion yen per year, up from the current 210 million yen, if it accepts document research that would only involve screening of academic papers or archived documents to see if a site is fit for waste storage.

It would translate into several billion yen over the multiple years such research typically takes, said the sources at the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, a unit of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

''If the subsidy is expanded at the stage of the survey of documents, it will give added impetus'' to site selection, said an official of the Nuclear Management Organization of Japan, tasked with disposing of high-level radioactive waste. The organization has been soliciting a host municipality since late 2002.

A critic questioned the administrative plan. ''If implemented, a huge sum of money will be handed out (to local governments) without them doing anything,'' said Baku Nishio, a joint chief of the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center. ''It just shows the difficulties the state is facing'' in finding a host.

Besides the outlay for document research that is expected to be raised, a total of 7 billion yen in annual subsidies is on offer, including 2 billion yen for pre-borehole research. The entire subsidy would be split between the host and neighboring governments.

A number of local governments have shown strong interest in hosting a disposal site but have met opposition from neighboring municipalities and prefectural governments.

The government is eyeing starting to run a disposal site within 10 years from 2028.

Since about 20 years are needed from the start of research to the final selection, the energy agency is hoping to start selecting sites for document surveys by summer next year, the sources said.

The agency is planning to seek budgetary appropriations for the expanded subsidy plan for fiscal 2007, the sources said.

Under the disposal plan, high-level waste that remains after uranium and plutonium are extracted at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant will be vitrified. About 40,000 canisters of such waste, including waste returned from reprocessing overseas, will be placed underground at a depth of least 300 meters in a stable layer to be shielded from underground water sources for at least 1,000 years.

2006-08-05 11:05:10JST