Why Japan’s Monju Nuclear Reactor Failed After Decades of Work

Monju was supposed to help unlock a new future for nuclear energy in Japan. Instead, the sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor spent much of its life being repaired, inspected, restarted — and shut down again. This documentary explores why Monju became one of Japan’s most difficult engineering projects: the 1995 sodium leak, the fourteen-year road back to operation, the 2010 in-vessel equipment accident, mounting maintenance problems, and the decision to abandon another restart. The story is more complicated than the popular claim that Monju barely produced electricity. The reactor did operate. The real failure was its inability to sustain the kind of operation needed to justify the enormous technical and institutional effort surrounding it. Today, Monju is still being decommissioned. Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s current program includes dismantling preparation and sodium-related work, with the overall decommissioning program extending toward fiscal 2047. This is the story of what happens when a technology can work in principle — but keeping the complete system working becomes the greater engineering challenge. #Engineering #Megaprojects #NuclearEngineering #Monju