Japan fails to report 640 kg of plutonium to IAEA

Posted on : 2014-06-09 11:48 KST Modified on : 2014-06-09 11:48 KST
Undisclosed amount could be used to make 80 nuclear weapons, and Japan altogether has enough for 5,500
 Saga Prefecture
Saga Prefecture

By Cho Ki-won, staff reporter

The Japanese government has been omitting an amount of plutonium capable of producing 80 nuclear weapons from its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports since 2012.

Japan’s Kyodo News, among other media outlets, reported on June 7 that the Japanese government has failed to report 640 kg of plutonium from the mixed oxide (MOX) fuel in the third reactor of the Genkai Nuclear Power Plant since 2012. The plant, which is located in Saga Prefecture, is operated by the Kyushu Electric Power Company.

MOX fuel is a mixture of plutonium and uranium fuel, which is intended for more efficient combustion of plutonium. It is essentially the same as uranium fuel, and can be used as nuclear fuel.

Kyushu Electric Power introduced the 640 kg of plutonium at a reactor undergoing regular inspection in March 2011, but did not take any further action for the next two years following the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster that same month. The Japanese government initially planned to use MOX fuel at 16 to 18 of its power plants, but those plans have been on hold since the catastrophe.

The unused plutonium is currently being stored in a fuel pool after being removed from the Genkai plant by Kyushu Electric Power in March 2013. The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper reported that it was subject to IAEA reporting requirements.

But when Tokyo reported on the country’s total amount of unused plutonium in 2011, it gave the IAEA a total of 1.6 tons, omitting the 640 kg in question. The amount was also absent from another report in 2013.

“Fuel within the reactor was regarded as in use, and has been omitted from reporting,” the secretariat of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission explained.

But Olli Heinonen, a former IAEA deputy director-general, was quoted by the Tokyo Shimbun as saying unused plutonium needs to be reported, no matter where it is.

The omission was discovered by Kyodo News and other journalists after first being reported by Nuclear Information, a Japanese NGO. The Japanese government insists that the unused plutonium was not deliberately underreported to the IAEA, but critics are saying the problem is the failure to give an accurate report on plutonium that could potentially be used to make weapons.

Japan possesses technology for reprocessing the spent nuclear fuel from its nuclear power plants. It also has the largest amount of reprocessed plutonium of any country that does not possess nuclear weapons.

While the Japanese government has reported total holdings of plutonium of around 44 tons, the omitted amount would bring the total up to 45, the Tokyo Shimbun reported. And with one nuclear weapon requiring 8 kg of plutonium, simple calculations show that Japan has enough now to make over 5,500 weapons.

 

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