For immediate release: April 9, 2002
For further information contact: Aileen Mioko Smith
090-3620-9251, or Stephen Ready

Kyoto, Japan–The Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC) in its 2001 White Paper reaches the conclusion that use of plutonium at Japanese nuclear power plants is safe. However, the NSC’s has a poor record when it comes to declaring there is no problem with Japan’s MOX program.

In 1999 when citizen organizations submitted evidence to the NSC that MOX fuel manufactured by the British company BNFL for Kansai Electric had falsified quality control data, the NSC failed to address the issue. Citizens filed an injunction against use of the fuel and were subsequently proven correct. As a result, Kansai Electric abandoned the fuel on December 16, 1999. The fuel is now scheduled to be returned to Britain.

Today, again, the NSC declared there would be no safety problems with using plutonium fuel atJ apanese nuclear power plants claiming there is ample experience in using this fuel in Japan and Europe. What the NSC fails to inform the Japanese public and international community is that experience with MOX fuel at nuclear power plants (light water reactors) in Japan is virtually non-existent, and that use of MOX fuel internationally is minimal when compared to use of uranium fuel. The Fugen ATR reactor which uses plutonium fuel is a great safety concern to many Fukui residents.

“Importantly, the NSC fails to inform the public and international community that the scale of MOX fuel use in Japan will be unprecedented. There is to be a higher concentration of plutonium in the fuel, and a higher burn-up rate. Experiments have shown that there are serious safety concerns with high burn-ups. In fact a NUPEC (Nuclear Power Engineering Corporation) report commissioned by the Japanese government addresses this precise concern” stated Aileen Mioko Smith, director of Green Action. Moreover, the NSC does not require that adaptations be made such as increasing the number of control rods when using MOX fuel.

There is no need for Japan’s plutonium program. Yet the Japanese government is pushing for restart of Japan’s troubled fast breeder prototype reactor Monju–even though there is no program to commercialize the breeder. There is no demand for plutonium and yet the government is promoting start up of Japan’s Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant which would, if run at full capacity, produce as much as 7 to 8 tons of plutonium a year. Only 5 kilograms of this plutonium would be necessary to create a nuclear weapon.

Green Action calls on the Japanese government to abandon its plutonium program which is unsafe, environmentally unsound, and is a nuclear proliferation threat to Asia.

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