IAEA’s Response to Green Action’s Joint Open Letter to Director General Mohamed ElBaradei

Frédéric Patalagoity, President and Managing Director AREVA Japan Urban Toranomon, Bld 5F 1-16-4 Toranomon, Minato-ku Tokyo 105-0001 Japan January 28th 2016 Dear Frédéric Patalagoity, We are writing to you to outline our concerns with the production standards, quality control and, ultimately, safety of AREVA plutonium MOX fuel produced for Japanese utilities. Specifically the planned use of 30 MOX assemblies in the Takahama reactor units 3&4, owned by Kansai Electric. As you will be aware it is fifteen years since the poor quality control and production standards of plutonium MOX fuel was first disclosed in the case of 8 MOX fuel assemblies manufactured by the then British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL)…

Letter sent by Greenpeace, Green Action, and Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center concerning the plutonium of Japanese MOX fuel shipment Download PDF (80KB) Open Letter to Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei International Atomic Energy Agency 2 March 2009 Dear Dr. ElBaradei, We are writing to warn you that the French state nuclear company, Areva, is actively denying the proliferation risks posed by reactor-grade plutonium contained in Mixed Oxide Fuel. The matter is an urgent one, as on March 6th 2009 a shipment of approximately 1.8 metric tons of plutonium contained in 65 assemblies of MOX fuel is scheduled to depart the port of Cherbourg bound for Japan.1 Our specific concerns are…

[Word (86KB)] [Japanese version] 26 April 2007 Dear Professor James Lovelock, We wish to express our deep respect for your keen insight in sounding the alarm from a very early stage concerning the threat of global warming to human society and the ecosystem of the planet, and for explaining through your “Gaia Theory” how the planet behaves as one being. At the same time, however, we cannot agree with your view that maximizing the use of nuclear fission energy 1 is an appropriate way to address global warming. At the 43rd anniversary symposium commemorating Nuclear Energy Day organized by the Japan Atomic Energy Relations Organization (JAERO) on 25 October 2006,…

[Joint letter sent from Green Action, Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, and Greenpeace Japan] Director General Mohamed ElBaradeiInternational Atomic Energy AgencyIAEA SecretariatHeadquarters OfficesA-1400 Vienna, Austria Re: ROKKASHO REPROCESSING PLANT AND JAPANESE ELECTRIC UTILITIES’ PLUTONIUM UTILIZATION PLANS Dear Director General ElBaradei: On 5 January 2006 we sent you a petition urging you to ensure that Japan does not breach its international commitment to the principle of “no surplus plutonium” and to quickly take appropriate action before active testing begins at Rokkasho and plutonium is accumulated. The following day the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPCO) published its Plutonium Utilization Plan. Attached please find a media briefing we issued today. It…

Letters sent to countries potentially on the route of the MOX fuel shipment This is a follow-up letter to the letter we sent you on 5 March concerning an imminent plutonium shipment (MOX fuel) from France to Japan that may pass by your country. The Japanese electric utility Kansai Electric announced in a press release yesterday, 21 March, that it plans to ship MOX fuel from France to Japan. They did not disclose the date. This Kansai Electric press release and the French company AREVA’s announcement on 20 March confirm that the shipment is indeed imminent. Our information continues to be that the British flagged transport vessels Pacific Heron and…