Two decades after a sodium leak and fire shut it down and nearly six decades after it was first conceived, the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, suffered another blow Wednesday when the Nuclear Regulation Authority called for it to be turned over to another operator.

To date, over ?1 trillion has been poured into Monju 〞 a plant that has never produced commercial electricity. Despite remaining inactive, safety measures alone cost ?50 million a day.

Anti-nuclear activists have hailed the NRA*s unusually critical language as an important step toward scrapping the reactor, which was supposed to burn plutonium mixed with uranium.