Restart
On November 24, 2000, Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced their intention to restart the Monju reactor. This decision was met with resistance by the public, resulting in a series of court battles. On January 27, 2003, the Nagoya High Court's Kanazawa branch made a ruling reversing its earlier 1983 approval to build the reactor, but then on May 30, 2005, Japan's Supreme Court gave the green light to reopen the Monju reactor.
The nuclear fuel was replaced for the restart. The original fuel loaded was mixed plutonium-uranium oxide with plutonium content of around 15-20%, but by 2009, due to natural radioactive decay, the fuel had only half of the original plutonium-241 content. This made achieving criticality impossible, requiring fuel replacement.
The restart was scheduled for October 2008, having been moved back five months. A restart date of February 2009 was again delayed due to the discovery of holes in the reactor's auxiliary building; in August 2009 it was announced that restart might be in February 2010.
In February 2010, JAEA obtained official approval to restart the reactor from the Japanese Government. The restart was definitely scheduled for the end of March. In late February, JAEA requested Fukui Prefecture and Tsuruga City for deliberations aimed at resuming test operation. Having obtained the go-ahead from both entities, JAEA started criticality testing, after which it took some months before commercial operation could resume - as for any new nuclear plant.
Operators started withdrawing control rods on May 6, 2010, marking the restart of the plant. The Fukui Prefecture governor, Issei Nishikawa asked the METI for additional stimulus to the prefecture including an expansion of the Shinkansen in turn for the restart of the plant. Monju achieved criticality on May 8, at 10:36 AM JST. Test runs were to continue until 2013, at which point the reactor could have started to feed power into the electric grid, being "full fledged" operation.
In September 2011 the ministry of education, science and technology asked for the fiscal year of 2012 only 20 to 30 percent of the budget to maintain and manage the Monju reactor for the year 2011. The uncertainty about Japan's future energy policy caused the ministry to conclude, that the project could not proceed.
The test run of the reactor, in which the reactor's output would be raised to 40 percent of its capacity by the end of March 2012, was postponed on 29 September 2011, by the Japanese Government because the uncertainty over the future of nuclear energy. After the disaster in Fukushima, the Atomic Energy Commission of Japan made a start with a review of Japan's long term energy policy. An outline of this policy would be published within 12 months. On 30 September officials of the Science and Technology ministry explained on meetings in the city of Tsuruga and the prefecture Fukui their decision not to start the test-run.
Asahi Shinbun Fukui local version reports on 22/June/2012 that the reactor restarts in July 2012.
Read more about this topic: Monju Nuclear Power Plant