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

[PDF: 31k] 30 November 2006Dr. Mohamed ElBaradeiDirector GeneralInternational Atomic Energy Agency Dear Director General ElBaradei: We in the Japanese movement against nuclear weapons appreciate your tireless efforts against nuclear proliferation. We welcome you to Japan! We are writing you to call your attention to a statement made by the president of JNFL (Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited) about the “unrealistic” IAEA MOX fuel conversion concept and urge you to clarify the IAEA’s position on this issue. JFNL president Isami Kojima stated at the JNFL press conference in Aomori on the 24th of November that it is practically impossible to separate plutonium again from MOX fuel.*1 (This was in reference to the…

A plutonium fuel shipment from France to Japan is scheduled to depart early April 2013. If it takes place, it would be the first plutonium shipment from Europe to Japan since the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. Many nations’ coastal waters could be on the route of the shipment. The route remains secret. Only two reactors are operating in Japan. None of the potential reactors the fuel is destined for have been granted permission to restart operations. Download: Letters sent to countries potentially on the route of the MOX fuel shipment (PDF) Attachments: MOX Fuel Shipment 2009: Issues and Controversies–Presented to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan 
by Aileen…

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)…

[PDF: 844KB] 7 September 2007To:— IAEA Expert Mission to the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station— Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) On 6 August 2007, we wrote to you concerning the IAEA Expert Mission to the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. In particular, we requested that the Expert Mission “not permit its report to be used…to diminish the significance of…the risks posed by earthquakes to nuclear power generation.” The Expert Mission failed on this count. It is highly regrettable that, on the basis of less than three days at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, without seeing inside the reactors, the Expert Mission’s report issued 17 August, 2007,* made statements…

21 June 2018 Dear Director General Yukiya Amano, We are writing to you in advance of a submission by the Government of Japan on its plutonium stockpiling program. It is our understanding that the IAEA will receive by the end of this month an explanation from the Abe administration on how Japan intends to respond to growing international criticism of its plutonium stocks, which in 2016 stood at 46,900 kilograms. As with its earlier commitment to maintain its plutonium stockpile to the minimum level made by the Abe administration at the Hague Summit in 2014, we predict the same meaningless rhetorical commitments in June 2018. The information to be submitted…

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…