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

March 9, 2006Governor Shingo MimuraGovernor’s Office 1-1-1 Nagashima, Aomori CityAomori Prefecture 030-8570 Japan Dear Governor Mimura, We are writing to you to express our concerns about the complacency that seems to exist in Japan regarding the threat posed by the Rokkasho reprocessing plant to international efforts to limit nuclear proliferation. If you give your approval, this plant in your prefecture may start active testing as early as the end of this month — a test that will ultimately separate over 4 tons of plutonium from spent fuel, enough to make more than 500 Nagasaki-type bombs. One example of this complacency can be observed in the February 14 letter sent by…

To Delegates to the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference Restart of Japan’s Monju Fast Breeder Reactor – Implications for Nuclear Proliferation, Nuclear Safety and Energy Supply On May 6, Japan’s Monju Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor(1) was restarted, after being shut down for over 14 years due to an accident involving a sodium leak and a fire. It is a great irony that a plutonium-fueled fast breeder reactor was restarted at a time when unprecedented international attention is being given to nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and security. We wish to draw your attention to some of the implications of the Monju restart, in particular in relation to nuclear proliferation, nuclear safety…

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…

Joint letter signed by U.S., Japanese, and Korean NGOs urging the U.S. to suspend consent for the transport of over 900kg of plutonium through the East Sea/Japan Sea to Kansai Electric’s Takahama nuclear power plant. The shipment is MOX (plutonium uranium) fuel reported to be leaving Cherbourg, France the week of April 14th. Kansai Electric has stated it is as yet undetermined whether the fuel will be used. April 12th 2013 Dear Secretary of State John Kerry: cc: senior State Department staff, Senate Foreign Relations/House Foreign Affairs We are writing to you to express our concern at plans by the United Kingdom, France and Japan to resume shipments of weapons-usable…

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…