Nuclear Plant For Steel Sought

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32018, 19 June 1969, Page 7

Nuclear Plant For Steel Sought

(NJL.P. A.'Reuter —Copyright) TOKYO, June 17. The Japan Iron and Steel Federation said this week that it would ask for a Government subsidy for construction of an experimental nuclear reactor for steel manufacturing. The request—which might lead to cut-price steel—will be made soon to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the Science and Technology Agency, and the Atomic Energy Commission. The industry hopes to have an experimental nuclear reactor for steel* making bj 1972 or 1973. The federation said the re quest was based on a report of a fact-finding mission sent late last year to the United States and West Europe by the Japan Iron and Steel Institute, the industry’s technb cal research body.

The mission studied efforts to utilise atomic energy for steel production, and concluded that Japan was some five years behind the United

States and West European nations in this field, the federation said. With high-temperature gas produced by a high-tempera-ture gas-cooled reactor, steel could be produced directly from iron ore instead of passing through the stage of pig iron as at present, the federation said. The method requires no coking coal, and the steelmaking cost would be reduced greatly, the federation said. The industry was keenly interested in the method because the industry had felt it difficult to secure sufficient good quality coking coal for Japan’s fast expanding steel industry, the federation said. The Japan Iron and Steel Institute last year organised a committee to discuss the future use of atomic power reactors to reduce steel man ufacturing costs. Its research projects Include supply of low cost electric power generated by atomic reactors to lower steel production costs, as well as nuclear-generated high temperature gas directly to fur naces.