Uncorking the plutonium (energy) genie
By Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO - As Japan debates how to meet its gargantuan energy needs in the 21st century - and whether nuclear power should be in the energy mix - plans to revive the controversial plutonium reprocessing plant at the remote village of Rokkasho-mura in Japan's northern Aomori prefecture has alarmed the global anti-nuclear movement.

At the sidelines of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference at the United Nations, a group of international academics, former officials and scientists, including four Nobel Prize physics laureates, issued a statement calling on Japan to indefinitely postpone operating the plant.

The declaration last week warns that Japan's plan to separate and stockpile up to eight tonnes of plutonium annually, enough to make 1,000 nuclear bombs, calls into question Japan's commitment to strengthening the NPT.

''At a time when the non-proliferation regime is facing its greatest challenge, Japan should not proceed with its current plans for the start-up of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant,'' the statement said.

Initial tests at Rokkasho using irradiated nuclear fuel are scheduled for December 2005, with full-scale operations slated for 2007, the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists said in a report published on its website.

''With Rokkasho operational, by 2020 Japan's domestic stock of plutonium could equal the US stockpile of plutonium for weapons,'' said Frank von Hippel, physicist and professor at the Science and Global Security Program at Princeton University in New Jersey, US.

Anti-nuclear lobbyists are worried that the safeguards at Rokkasho would be inadequate to prevent the deliberate diversion or theft of large quantities of plutonium.

''Separated plutonium poses a risk of theft, and such large stocks would be destabilizing,'' Von Hippel said in the report.

There are valid concerns for such fears.

Such a facility will not be operating in a political vacuum, but rather in one of the most unstable regions in the world, Northeast Asia. All countries in the region - Japan, North and South Korea, Taiwan and China, as well as Russia, and the US military presence - make this a region of high tension.

''All of them have nuclear programs at various stages of development from the on-going modernization of US and Chinese nuclear weapons, to the opaque nuclear weapons program in North Korea, as well as the continuing interest in acquiring plutonium by the nuclear establishments in Taiwan and South Korea,'' said the environmental group Greenpeace.

''However, Japan is alone in the region in moving ahead with the stockpiling of large quantities of plutonium for which it has no practical, peaceful use,'' it warned.

Nonetheless, at the heart of the matter is the continuing debate over Japan's growing energy needs.

Proponents of nuclear power have always argued that Japan is a resource-poor country and if it continues to rely on fossil-fuel imports from the Middle East, it would mean attempting to secure a finite resource from a politically unstable part of the world.

They emphasize that nuclear power offers Japan a cheap, inexpensive and reliable energy source. Also since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, the pronuclear lobby has also rushed to add that nuclear power is needed by Japan to meet its commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2004, Japan had 53 nuclear power reactors (52 were in operation), making it third in terms of number of plants after the United States (103) and France (57).

Over the past quarter century, as many other nations attempt to find alternate energy sources, nuclear power has gone from 17% of Japan's total electricity supply in 1990 to 34.6% of total supply in 2004.

Five more nuclear power plants are being built, and there are plans to increase the 34.6% figure to 40% by 2010.

''Following a series of harrowing accidents, nuclear power development was in cold storage until recently. The changing picture poses risks for both the environment and Japan's pacifist leanings,'' said Yuko Fujita, a professor of environmental science at Keio University.

Fujita told IPS nuclear power reactors that operate and produce dangerous radioactive fuel pose a serious threat to the health of workers and an accident can result in thousands of fatalities.

''Apart from the risk of contamination to people and the environment, high-level nuclear power development produces the capabilities to produce nuclear weapons. The industry is criminal offence,'' he argued.

Since 1999 a spate of accidents, scandals and cover-ups have shaken public confidence. On September 30 that year, at Tokaimura near Tokyo, two workers at a nuclear plant died when they ignored safety procedures and dumped a large quantity of uranium into a settling basin. The uranium reached critical mass, causing an explosion. Tens of thousands of people in the area were quarantined and checked for radiation.

Japan's worst nuclear accident occurred last August when five workers were killed and six injured at the No 3 nuclear reactor at Kansai Electric's Mihima Nuclear Power Station in Fukui prefecture, central Japan, when hot steam leaked from a ruptured secondary coolant water pipe.

After the nuclear plant accident, Kansai Electric said in October it had found 14 additional cases of falsified inspection records on its thermal power plants, after revealing in June 87 cases of data falsification.

Besides the Rokkasho reprocessing plant, of particular concern also is Japan's determination to go ahead with a fast-breeder reactor program (FBR).

''FBR program were in operation in both the US and Europe in the 1970s, at a time when many experts predicted the world's supply of uranium would soon be depleted,'' said Eric Johnston, the author of Japan's Nuclear Nightmare: Power to the People?


''But that proved not to be the case and this realization, combined with public unease over handling the world's most dangerous substance, led the US to abandon the FBR program by the early 1980s. European countries began to follow shortly afterwards,'' Johnston said.

But not Japan.

It is forging ahead with an experimental fast-breeder reactor called Monju in Fukui prefecture, and there seems to be mainstream support for the project. The Yomuiri Shimbun, in an editorial in January, argued that Monju has been developed at huge costs to the taxpayer, and so ''must be respected as the next-generation reactor that produces more nuclear fuel than it consumes''.

''It is a dream," the newspaper said, for Japan that lacks fossil fuel and uranium resources.''

(Inter Press Service)