On September 2, as we reached the
60th anniversary of the end of World War II, Northeast
Asia had changed in so many ways since the
devastation brought about by years of conflict.
But tragically, many historical problems remain
unresolved.
The Korean peninsula is still
divided; the United States is the predominant
military power in the region; and nationalism
remains a powerful force in Japan, China and the
Koreas. These alone should give rise to major
concern for the future peace and stability of the
region. But the threats to peace in the region
could soon get worse.
Sixty years ago the
Japanese city of Nagasaki was destroyed by one
nuclear bomb containing five kilograms of
plutonium. Japan reportedly now has one of the
largest stocks of weapons-usable plutonium in the
world (45,000 kilograms and growing) as well as
access to the most advanced missile technology.
This is not by accident but design. Deliberate
policy established in the late 1960s by senior
politicians was aimed at acquiring the nuclear
material required for atomic bombs, and the means
to deliver them. [1] Without having to cross the
difficult threshold of actual weapons development,
Japan has already become a de facto nuclear
weapons state.
Successive Japanese
governments have achieved this status through a
nuclear energy policy based upon the production
and use of plutonium, and an ambitious if flawed
commercial space program. It is this nuclear
policy that will soon lead to the commissioning of
the world’s most expensive nuclear facility - the
Rokkasho-mura reprocessing plant. [2]
The
big question is whether or not a future Japanese
government will take a political decision to
develop nuclear weapons. Nuclear proliferation
threats on the Korean peninsula and the growth of
China's economic and military power are two
important (and real) drivers that are being cited
by powerful interests in Japan as justification
for considering what should be the unthinkable. So
at a time when the tensions, and therefore the
proliferation dynamics in Northeast Asia, are
becoming both more serious and complex, there is
an urgent need to examine both Japan's plutonium
program and the political context of Japan's
nuclear weapons policy. This briefing will seek to
focus on a few of these.
Introduction Unlike South Korea
and Taiwan, which had their pursuit of
reprocessing and plutonium frustrated by direct US
intervention, Japanese nuclear energy policy since
the 1960s has been based on the large-scale
production and use of plutonium. The original plan
to separate plutonium from nuclear reactor spent
fuel and then use it to fuel a generation of fast
breeder reactors has failed, with only the Monju
fast reactor remaining. Instead the plan to use
plutonium as fuel is dependent upon successful
loading in conventional light water reactors. This
plan too has run into major delays due to the
reality of unsafe technology, poor operating
standards and a determined anti-nuclear movement
that has, over recent decades, challenged all
major developments.
Whereas in 1994,
Japanese officials were predicting that plutonium
demand (the amount required to fuel nuclear power
plants) would be 85,000 to 90,000 kilograms by
2010, today not one gram of plutonium is loaded
into commercial nuclear power reactors. Moreover,
while the demand side has been a disaster for
Japanese government plans, its plutonium supply
has run out of control, with total plutonium
stocks now at more than 45 metric tons - a
fivefold rise from the early 1990s. This could
rise to more than 100 tons within the next 15
years.
To date, most of this plutonium has
accumulated in overseas reprocessing plants in
France and the United Kingdom under contracts
signed with Japan. However, with plans to start up
the US$21 billion Rokkasho plant, Japan will have
a reprocessing capacity only equaled by the
world's largest nuclear weapons states.
The pursuit of
plutonium Diplomatic cable from the US
ambassador to Japan, to US secretary of state
Warren Christopher, March 1993: "Can Japan expect
that if it embarks on a massive plutonium
recycling program that Korea and other nations
would not press ahead with reprocessing programs?
Would not the perception of Japan's being awash in
plutonium and possessing leading edge rocket
technology create anxiety in the region?"
Japan's no-plutonium stockpile
policy In response to political pressure
over its plutonium program, the Japanese
government declared in the early 1990s that it
would not hold more plutonium than was necessary
for commercial use. The government's "no plutonium
stockpile" policy and its declared supply and
demand figures for plutonium, were meant to
reassure the international community, particularly
in East Asia, that Japan would only possess
sufficient plutonium to meet commercial
requirements. However, almost from day one, Japan
has possessed well in excess of its requirements,
and as the 1990s unfolded the excess stock has
increased.
US Embassy diplomatic cable to
US Secretary of State, "Japanese plutonium
transport and reprocessing issues", November 15,
1991: "The squishy part of the Japanese plan,
where the numbers appear vague and uncertain, is
the use of MOX [mixed oxide] fuels in commercial
reactors. If use is less than planned Japan will
have to slow down its reprocessing and accumulate
growing amounts of unreprocessed spent fuel or
will have to produce separated plutonium that is
clearly excess to Japan's civilian needs."
Nearly 15 years on and the only thing that
has changed is the volume of Japanese plutonium.
Japanese plans for plutonium fuel (MOX) use remain
highly "squishy" or uncertain. At the time of the
1991 diplomatic cable Japan had 9,000 kilograms of
plutonium. The current stockpile has increased
fivefold to nearly 45,000 kilograms.
In
1991, Japan's Atomic Energy Commission predicted
that by 2010:
50 tons of plutonium in MOX would be loaded
into light water reactors
10 tons of plutonium in MOX would be loaded in
advanced thermal reactors
20-30 tons of plutonium in MOX would be loaded
into fast breeder reactors.
In reality,
these projections have been completely wrong. If
we add Japan's current available plutonium
stockpile (45,000 kg) to the cumulative supply of
plutonium from Rokkasho operations through to 2020
(100,000 kg), by 2020 Japan's plutonium stockpile
will reach 145 metric tons. It is clear that Japan
has become the world's largest holder of
weapons-usable plutonium, far surpassing that
contained in the United States nuclear weapons
arsenal of 100 tons.
"I admit that we have
excessive amounts of plutonium, but our purpose is
for research," Yuichi Tonozuka, president of the
Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute, said in
April.
No such justification would be
permissible by a South Korean nuclear official,
because the United States blocks Seoul from
acquiring plutonium. Still, it is almost
inconceivable that Japan's plans for plutonium MOX
fuel by 2020 will use more than 40 or so tons of
plutonium. The history of Japan's program would
suggest that it will fail to utilize even this
amount. Thus Japan's stockpile of plutonium will
continue to grow with all the resultant negative
consequences for global nuclear non-proliferation
and regional peace and security.
The 2005
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference
failed to reach any sort of consensus. It is,
therefore, urgent to strengthen the NPT regime and
revitalize the treaty. In the short term, the most
important measure to do so is to strengthen the
safeguards system applied by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to make it more
difficult to acquire fissile materials, plutonium
and highly enriched uranium - to make nuclear
weapons.
The most serious problem facing
the IAEA safeguards system is that the most
sensitive plants insofar as the diversion of
weapon-usable materials is concerned -
particularly uranium-enrichment facilities and
plutonium reprocessing plants - are impossible to
safeguard effectively. [3] Consider, for example,
large commercial reprocessing plants that separate
the unused uranium, plutonium and fission products
in spent nuclear power reactor fuel elements, such
as the one under construction at Rokkasho-Mura.
Safeguarding the plutonium in spent
nuclear reactor fuel elements before reprocessing
is relatively simple. It is just a matter of
counting the number of elements. Once the
plutonium is removed from spent reactor fuel
elements at Rokkasho-Mura, safeguarding it is
quite a different matter. There is no clear
distinction between the commercial use of
plutonium and its military use. To argue that the
further spread of nuclear weapons must be
prevented, as Japan does, while, at the same time,
operating a civil reprocessing plant is, to say
the least, inconsistent.
A good
nuclear-weapons designer could construct a nuclear
weapon from three or four kilograms of the
plutonium produced by the Rokkasho-Mura
reprocessing plant. To ensure the timely detection
of the diversion of such a small amount of
plutonium in a plant where so much plutonium is
handled requires very precise safeguard
techniques, requiring significantly more precision
than is currently achievable. Even with the best
available and foreseeable safeguards technology it
is not possible to get the precision necessary.
[4]
The Rokkasho-Mura Reprocessing
Plant cannot be safeguarded and should be
abandoned In August 2004, a leak started
in a pipe connected to the accountancy tank at the
front end of the THORP reprocessing plant at
Sellafield and complete failure of the pipe
occurred in mid- January. [5] Solution, containing
spent reactor fuel elements dissolved in nitric
acid, leaked into a cement secondary containment
chamber. The leak was not detected until April,
eight months after it began, by which time about
83,000 liters, containing about 160 kg of
plutonium, had leaked out. Opportunities to detect
the leak - cell sampling and level measurements -
were missed. That this incident could have
occurred is one example of the inadequacies of the
safeguards system for reprocessing plants.
The main reason for the difficulty of
safeguarding the Rokkasho-Mura plant relates to
uncertainty about the amount of plutonium entering
the plant. An estimate of this amount is made from
the amount of uranium in the spent reactor fuel
elements sent to the reprocessing plant by the
Japanese operators of the reactors. This is
calculated by the reactor operators from their
knowledge of the amount of uranium originally in
the reactor fuel elements and of the way in which
the reactor was operated while the fuel was in it
- in particular the amount of heat produced by the
fuel. The estimate relies on computer calculations
not direct measurement.
The first
measurement, as opposed to an estimate based on
calculation, of plutonium in the Rokkasho-Mura
reprocessing plant is made on samples taken from
an accountancy tank at the beginning of the
process. Using mass spectrometry, the ratio of the
amount of plutonium to the amount of uranium is
determined. From the calculated amount of uranium
and the measured uranium/plutonium ratio, the
amount of plutonium is calculated. [6]
There may be errors in each stage of this
operation. For example, some plutonium will remain
in the parts of the fuel elements not dissolved in
the nitric acid (called "the hulls"). The amount
is very difficult to estimate.
The
operators of the Rokkasho-Mura reprocessing plant
will, therefore, be uncertain about the precise
amount of plutonium produced by the plant. The
uncertainty is called the "material unaccounted
for" or MUF. Because of the nature of the errors
involved, the value of the MUF will usually not be
zero even if no illegal diversion of plutonium has
occurred.
The fact that there is MUF means
the operators of a commercial reprocessing plant
do not know whether an amount of plutonium has
gone missing. For example, if the police ring up
the operators and say that a terrorist or criminal
group has contacted them and provided evidence
that they have acquired some plutonium, enough to
fabricate a nuclear explosive, the operators could
not confirm with any certainty that a few
kilograms had, or had not, gone missing. This is
because the amount that may be missing will be
within the MUF. It must be concluded that
currently the IAEA cannot effectively safeguard
the Rokkasho-Mura reprocessing plant.
According to recent estimates, the
potential material unaccounted for (MUF) at the
Rokkasho- Mura plant will be about 50 kg per year.
This plant, which will include the most up-to-date
safeguards technologically available, is designed
to allow the application of the most effective
safeguards possible today. The plant will have the
capacity to reprocess about 800 tonnes of spent
fuel a year, producing about eight tonnes of
plutonium. The effectiveness of safeguards on the
plant, according to these estimates, is more than
99%. Nevertheless, even on these very optimistic
estimates, the potential material unaccounted for
still amounts to about a nuclear weapon's worth a
month.
We realize that the official
response to MUF is to claim that even if plutonium
goes astray from the reprocessing plant, physical
protection measures applied will prevent it
leaving the site. We disagree with this and
question the effectiveness of physical protection,
and therefore still believe the safeguard system
is inadequate.
The Japanese nuclear
industry is keen to reprocess spent reactor fuel
because it recovers unused uranium and plutonium
that can be reused as nuclear fuel. The fact that
there may be some plutonium unaccounted for at
Rokkasho-Mura is acknowledged, but it is argued
that physical protection measures can be made
sufficiently effective at the plant to ensure that
no significant amounts of plutonium are removed
from the site. Those anxious to prevent the use of
plutonium for the production of nuclear weapons by
the government or by terrorists argue that any
significant amount of plutonium unaccounted for is
unacceptable and that reprocessing at Rokkasho-
Mura plant should be abandoned.
There is
no need to reprocess spent nuclear power reactor
fuel elements. Civil spent reactor fuel elements
can stored until they can be permanently disposed
of in a geological repository - such as the one
planned by the US at Yucca Mountain. Plutonium is
generally used as nuclear-reactor fuel in the form
of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel. The plan is to produce
MOX at the Rokkasho-Mura plant by mixing uranium
dioxide and plutonium dioxide. This can be used as
fuel in Japanese nuclear-power reactors instead of
uranium dioxide.
MOX enthusiasts argue
that the use of MOX allows plutonium to generate
more energy in nuclear reactors rather than
wasting this energy, and that the use of MOX would
reduce the stockpiles of civil Japanese plutonium.
These stockpiles are politically embarrassing for
the Japanese government because the plutonium
could be used to fabricate nuclear weapons. The
cost of MOX fuel is, however, much higher than the
cost of ordinary uranium dioxide fuel.
The
use of MOX increases the risk of nuclear weapon
proliferation. The necessary steps of chemically
separating the plutonium dioxide from uranium
dioxide and converting the dioxide into plutonium
metal that can be used to fabricate nuclear
weapons are relatively straightforward. The use of
MOX in a nuclear-power reactor is not a
satisfactory solution to the problem of excess
plutonium stocks. A more rational solution would
be to abandon reprocessing at Rokkasho-Mura and to
immobilize existing stocks of Japanese plutonium
until they can be permanently disposed of.
Safeguards and, therefore, the
non-proliferation regime, would be significantly
strengthened if reprocessing and the production
and use of MOX at the Rokkasho-Mura plant were
abandoned. This would significantly improve global
security. Not one country that has initiated a
nuclear weapons program since 1945 has done so on
the basis of a democratic debate. [7] Decisions
were made behind closed doors in great secrecy and
in the context of external threats - actual,
perceived, contrived and otherwise. In the case of
Japan there is a dangerous assumption that the
decision to build nuclear weapons will require the
overturning of public opinion, which is generally
considered to be by majority opposed to nuclear
weapons. History informs us that conditions evolve
that lead to debate and opposition after the
threshold has been crossed, by which time it is
too late.
Today, Japan is closer to those
conditions than at any time since at least the
1960’s, and probably since its wartime program in
the 1940s. In the case of the military programs
run by the Imperial Navy and Army under the
guidance of the father of the Japanese atom,
Nishina Yoshio, it was lack of time, resources and
fissile material that led to failure. [8] In the
1960s it was the political judgement that it was
not in Japan's national interest to acquire the
bomb - it could rely upon the US nuclear guarantee
(at least for the foreseeable future) and at the
same time acquire the means to go nuclear if
necessary.
With the technical means to
build advanced nuclear weapons within six months,
what remains is the political judgement of the
ruling elite of Japan first to assess its
strategic imperatives and then the political
consequences of going nuclear. As a de facto
nuclear weapons state under the US nuclear
umbrella, there remains today no immediate need
for Japan to build nuclear weapons. Its plutonium
stockpile is already a strategic asset. But the
conditions for a decision are evolving, and the
public is being softened up for a possible
decision.
Since the 1950s leading
politicians, including prime ministers and cabinet
secretaries have pronounced on the possibility of
Japan developing nuclear weapons. Many of these
statements have made clear that the Japanese
constitution does not prohibit Japan possessing
nuclear weapons and that its three non-nuclear
principles are not legally binding.
Political momentum towards nuclear
weapons Through most of this period the
justification has been for obvious reasons, put in
the context of national self-defense, but in most
cases without explicit threats being named (at
least in public). Today the threats are now more
explicitly cited. In recent years leading
politicians such as Ozawa Ichiro warned that Japan
could use its commercial plutonium stockpile for
making nuclear weapons. Ozawa, leader of the
opposition party Jiyuto (Liberal Party), declared
in 2002 that if the military threat posed by China
continued to grow, "It would be so easy for us to
produce nuclear warheads - we have plutonium at
nuclear power plants in Japan, enough to make
several thousand such warheads." [9]
The
crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons program,
based around plutonium reprocessing, strengthened
the position of those in Japan advocating nuclear
weapons development.
This was acknowledged
by no less than the US ambassador to Japan Thomas
Schieffer: "If you had a nuclear North Korea, it
just introduces a whole different dynamic ... That
increases the pressure on both South Korea and
Japan to consider going nuclear themselves."
(Tokyo, June 2005). While such a declaration is
intended to put pressure on China to act more
forcefully with its ally in Pyongyang, it is also
highly significant in terms of US policy toward
Japan.
In the 1960s, the Nixon
administration considered the option of arming
Japan with nuclear weapons. Forty years on it
would be surprising if there were not those in
Washington considering that such a development
would be in the medium term interests of the
United States. And anyway, the US is already
signaling that it would not be able to stop it.
Of course, according to most analysts
North Korea already possesses a few or several
nuclear weapons. It has not yet demonstrated their
existence through an actual nuclear test, although
it has been speculated that it is imminent. At
which point the debate in Japan over its security
vulnerability to North Korean missiles would
become frantic.
More likely a test remains
a threat, which will be deployed only when North
Korea has run out of other options. But the
general atmosphere remains threatening and
therefore fertile for those in Japan who would
move towards weaponization.
A further
factor to consider is the general view that
international opprobrium/condemnation would be
visited on Japan if it were to go nuclear. It is
true that the consequences for Japan's nuclear
trade would be problematic, perhaps severely
damaging as Japan is supplied nuclear materials
and technology under condition of peaceful use.
But what of wider diplomatic and economic
consequences?
It is worth considering the
reality of international relations in the early
21st century. Japan's major nuclear trading
partners are in possession of their own nuclear
weapons (and currently modernizing them) or
covered by the US nuclear umbrella. Current
nuclear non-proliferation policy is based upon the
double standards of opposing the programs of Iran
or North Korea while maintaining or expanding
their own weapons programs. Japan is unlikely to
be labelled part of the axis of evil. If triggered
by a North Korean test, or equivalent dramatic
development, while not welcoming a Japanese bomb,
it is likely that Japan's allies would explain it
as a regrettable but understandable reaction.
And it gets worse. Witness the experience
of India and Pakistan in the aftermath of their
nuclear weapons tests in 1998. While sanctions
were applied, including by Japan, the reality
today is that their relations with the United
States and allies (especially Japan) have never
been closer. They are both identified as strategic
partners, with India seen as vital in terms of
economic production and future markets, an ally in
the "war against terror" in the case of the
military elite ruling Pakistan, and a counter
balance to China in the case of India. The reality
is that both countries have gotten away, nay
thrived, in the aftermath of becoming nuclear
powers. India is due to sign nuclear cooperation
agreements with the United States and Pakistan is
soon to take delivery from the US of nuclear
strike capable F-16s.
As the world's
second largest economy, the important and
dangerous lesson for policy makers in Japan is
that the world soon learns to live with nuclear
realities. If India and Pakistan can do it, then
Japan certainly can. Japan's strategic importance
to the United States has moved center stage under
the Bush administration. There are pressures to
revise its constitution with the active
encouragement of the US, and Japan's military is
being deployed overseas, and undertaking joint
training with the US as never before. The
prospects of Japan moving further toward
nationalism and militarism are made worse by the
possible successor to Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi, Shinzo Abe.
"Treat nothing as
inevitable" is a good principle to live one's life
by. Unfortunately, in the case of Japan's nuclear
development, it may not be sufficient. The
international community - read governments - will
learn to live with Japanese nuclear weapons if
that occasion arises. The consequences would of
course be terrible for Northeast Asia. Pressure in
South Korea to respond would be huge, relations
with China could become disastrous, and the global
nuclear non-proliferation regime centered around
the NPT reduced to a historical footnote.
Japan's existing plutonium program is a
driver for nuclear proliferation in the East Asian
region and further afield. For example, Iran has
cited Rokkasho to support its case for being
permitted to complete its uranium enrichment plant
at Natanz. There is an alternative to Japan
travelling full circle from the ashes of 1945 and
becoming a declared nuclear weapon state. It will
come through active citizen opposition in Japan
based upon informed debate and mobilization, aided
by support from overseas. A change in energy
policy that abandons plutonium use on the grounds
of non-proliferation would be an important first
toward rejecting the path chosen by governments
(but not the people)in the world's nuclear weapons
states. It will also strengthen Japan's calls for
global nuclear disarmament.
The nuclear
weapon states, in particular the United States,
continue to defy their legal obligations to disarm
their nuclear weapons. The 60th anniversary of the
first use of the atomic bomb is a hugely important
opportunity to begin the mobilization not just in
Japan
Notes [1] Mainichi
Shimbun, in its August 1, 1994 edition, revealed
that a top secret Foreign Ministry document called
"Our Nation's Foreign Policy Principles" was
produced in 1969. [2] Total costs for the
plant are US$21 billion. See, "Nuclear Twilight
Zone", Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. May 2001.
[3] Leventhal, P., "IAEA Safeguards
Shortcomings: A Critique", Nuclear Control
Institute, Washington, DC., September 12, 1994
[4] Miller, M. M., "Are IAEA Safeguards on
Plutonium Bulk-Handling Facilities Effective?",
Nuclear Control Institute, Washington, DC., August
1990. [5] Nuclear Engineering International,
Thorp board of enquiry report released, Nuclear
Engineering International, 29th June 2005. [6]
Frank Barnaby and Shaun Burnie, "Safeguards on the
Rokkasho reprocessing plant", Greenpeace
International, June 2002. [7] The US Manhattan
project for obvious reasons was launched without
Congressional debate; both France and the UK
launched theirs with limited cabinet involvement
and no parliamentary debate; the Soviet and
Chinese program were initiated under direct orders
of Stalin and Mao; India announced their program
with a nuclear test in 1974; Pakistan similarly in
1998; Israel still refuses to officially confirm
its program exists; South Africa dismantled its
weapons only after the end of Apartheid and
democratic elections. Programs run by Australia,
Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, South Korea and
Taiwan to name the most sophisticated were done so
in great secrecy, with limited parliamentary
debate in a few cases. [8] The first English
language report confirming Japan's nuclear weapons
program was made by David Snell in the October 3rd
edition of the Atlanta Constitution, the headline
read, "Japan Developed Atomic Bomb - Russians
Grabbed Scientists". More substantive details on
Japan's wartime bomb program, Genzai Bakudan, were
provided by Deborah Shapely in Science, vol. 199,
Jan. 13th, 1978. While Snell claimed that Japan
progressed to the point where it conducted a
nuclear test on August 10th 1945, off the coast of
present day North Korea, there remain significant
doubts that such a test took place. The latest
thinking is that without sufficient fissile
material Japan was 6-9 months away from an actual
weapon. [9] Ozawa's statement was made during
a lecture given in the southern City of Fukuoka,
though was not supposed to be made public, April
2002, see Greenpeace International press
statement, "Ozawa confirms nuclear weapons
potential of Japan's plutonium program as further
nuclear transports loom", April 7th 2002.
Dr Frank Barnaby is a nuclear
issues consultant to Oxford Research Group (ORG),
and has been on ORG's Council of Advisers since
its inception. He is a nuclear physicist by
training. He was executive secretary of the
Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
in the late 1960s and director of the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute from
1971-81. He is now a freelance defense analyst,
and is a prolific author on military technology.
His most recent book is How to Build a Nuclear
Bomb(Granta, 2003).
Shaun
Burnie is coordinator of Greenpeace
International nuclear campaigns. Based in
Scotland, he has worked in Japan and Korea since
1991. He writes in a personal capacity and this
briefing does not necessarily reflect the views of
Greenpeace International.
