A fire broke out yesterday at a facility housing a prototype Japanese fast-breeder nuclear reactor but was quickly brought under control, police said.
The blaze in a maintenance building posed no threat to a neighbouring building housing the test reactor, about 30 metres away, police said.
"Nobody was hurt and the fire was contained on the first floor of the maintenance building," said a duty officer at the Ibaraki prefectural police headquarters.
He said the fire started about 8.40 p.m. (11.40 a.m. Irish time) at the facility in the town of Oarai, Ibaraki prefecture, about 100 kilometres north of Tokyo.
The test reactor, called "Joyo", is not in commercial operation and has been idle since June last year for inspections.
The maintenance building is used to dismantle, repair, clean or store instruments for the reactor.
A fast-breeder feeds itself by producing more than it burns and is considered critical to self-reliance in energy for Japan, which depends on imports, including nuclear fuel, for 80 per cent of its energy needs.
The facility, owed by the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Development Organisation, is located about 20 kilometres from the scene of a deadly disaster at a uranium processing plant at Tokaimura.
In September, 1999, three workers at the Tokaimura plant set off a critical reaction when they poured too much uranium into a precipitation tank. The accident exposed at least 439 residents to radiation in what was the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
Japan has 51 reactors supplying about one third of the country's electricity needs.
Another JNC reactor, the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor, remains shut since an accident in 1995.
State-run JNC was opened on October 1st, 1998, taking control of the three core fields of research and development that were previously run by the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp (PNC), which came under fire for mismanagement.