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

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…

[PDF: 28KB] 7 September 2007Mr. Tsunehisa KatsumataPresidentTokyo Electric Power Company Request for English Translations Dear Mr. Katsumata, We are writing to request full English translations of TEPCO’s reports on the impact of the 16 July 2007 ChuetsuOki Earthquake on the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant. The limited English information which your company has published on its web site is welcome, but much more is necessary to enable non-English speakers to understand the behavior of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant during the Chuetsu-Oki Earthquake. Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center contacted your company to find out if it intended to translate its 10 August 2007 report1 into English. The report contained key information that…

[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…

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…

[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,…