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

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…

[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…

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…

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…

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…

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…