Kamisaibara, Okayama

Kamisaibara (上齋原村, Kamisaibara-son) was a village located in Tomata District, Okayama Prefecture, Japan.

As of 2003 (before the merger), the village had an estimated population of 914 and a density of 10.10 persons per km². The total area was 90.49 km².

On March 1, 2005, Kamisaibara, along with the town of Okutsu, and the village of Tomi (all from Tomata District), was merged into the expanded town of Kagamino.^[1]

Kamisaibara is the site of the first discovery of an outcropping of uranium ore within Japan. After discovery, the Ningyō-tōge Office of Atomic Fuel Corporation (now called the Ningyō-tōge Environmental Engineering Center of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency) was built in 1957. The site has been involved in the "development of front-end technologies for the nuclear fuel cycle, namely, uranium exploration, uranium mining, refining, and enrichment."