Abstract
Still powering up in Japan
Unfortunately, “Japan's Nuclear Twilight Zone,” by Shaun Burnie and Aileen Mioko Smith (May/June 200 lj, gives your readers a distorted view of Japan's nuclear power program. The assertions that the program, including its planned use of plutonium, is ill-conceived and collapsing, is seriously off the mark.
Japan's need for long-term energy security is a critical national priority. Imports account for approximately 80 percent of Japan's total energy needs. Since the devastating oil shocks of the 1970s, Japan's nuclear power program has played a crucial role in improving the country's energy security. Nuclear power has served to diversify the country's energy mix, both by fuel and by source. As a non-emitting energy source, nuclear energy is also an integral part of Japan's strong commitment to reducing carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol.
Japan has chosen the closed fuel cycle primarily for reasons of long-term energy security and waste management. Nuclear energy and the recovery and reuse of plutonium as a nuclear fuel will significantly enhance energy security and reduce reliance on foreign fossil-fuel sources. In addition, as a nuclear waste management strategy, removing plutonium from spent fuel is superior to disposing of spent fuel directly.
The recovery and reuse of plutonium in nuclear reactor fuel will play an important role in meeting vital energy and environmental objectives and in preserving the long-term sus-tainability of nuclear power. Japanese utilities believe that the use of mixed-oxide (mox) fuel should be carried out as soon as possible in order to reduce stockpiles of Japanese plutonium.
This is not a new concept. Mox fuel has been used in light-water reactors for more than 30 years, mainly in Europe. Over the years, more than 2,000 mox assemblies have been loaded in light-water reactors. In April 2001, the chairman of the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan reconfirmed Japan's utility companies' commitment to mox fuel. The utilities are working together to implement the use of mox in light-water reactors at 16 to 18 facilities by 2010.
In view of the importance of mox fuel to Japan's energy, environmental, and waste management needs, the utilities have agreed to redouble their efforts to prepare for implementation. This includes improved communications with residents living near plants that will employ mox fuel as well as with the general population. Our goal is to convey a better understanding of the program, thereby reinforcing public support.
While costs are an important consideration in the operation of an electric utility, the outlays for reprocessing and plutonium recycling are quite small in relation to the overall costs of operating a nuclear power plant. According to Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry cost calculations, the current price of nuclear power is 5.9 yen per kilowatt hour. This compares favorably to the cost of other energy sources—hydroelectric at 13.6 yen; oil-fired thermal, 10.2 yen; coal-fired thermal, 6.5 yen; and liquefied natural gas-fired thermal, 6.4 yen. The estimated cost of nuclear power varies, based on assumptions such as capacity factor and service life, but the economic variability of nuclear power is comparable to other power sources.
Although mox fuel costs more than uranium fuel, its economic impact on overall nuclear cost is negligible—about 1 percent of generation costs. By 2010, about one-third of the 51 Japanese commercial reactors in operation will utilize mox, but mox will make up less than 10 percent of all nuclear fuel used in Japan.
Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited's Rok-kasho reprocessing plant, now under construction, is expected to begin commercial operations in 2005. Instead of producing plutonium dioxide, it will produce mox powder (50 percent uranium and 50 percent plutonium). This commercial plant (not a training facility) is a key facility in the Japanese nuclear fuel-cycle program.
Regarding fast reactor development, the latest Japanese long-term nuclear plan, issued in November 2000 by the Atomic Energy Commission, states that the Monju prototype reactor is considered to be the core R&D facility for fast reactor technologies.
Steps will be taken to quickly resume operations at Monju. We understand that the Japan Nuclear Fuel Cycle Development Institute, a government institute, has applied for a modified license to operate this facility. Fast reactor development is one of the technological options.
I take issue with the authors' assertion that operating the Rokkasho reprocessing plant will raise serious East Asian and international proliferation concerns. Japan is the only nation to have suffered the devastation of nuclear attack. Japan's non-proliferation credentials are unrivaled.
It is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has thereby assumed a strict legal obligation to forswear the manufacture or acquisition of any nuclear explosive devices. Japan has accepted International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) safeguards on its peaceful nuclear activities. All of Japan's nuclear material is regularly inspected by the IAEA. Japan has also ratified the IAEA's Additional Protocols, designed to strengthen safeguards.
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Send them to:
Letters to the Editor
The Bulletin
6042 South Kimbark
Chicago, IL 60637
fax: 773-702-0725
e-mail:
Be sure to include your mailing address and phone number.
Another reason to move the clock
I agree with the arguments made by Owen Henderson that the hands of the Doomsday Clock should be advanced closer to midnight (Letters, July/August).
But an even stronger rationale, in my opinion, is the Bush administration's failure to unilaterally stand down the thousands of strategic nuclear weapons now on “hair-trigger” alert. Six months into the new administration, there is no hint of movement on the promise to do so made by candidate George W. Bush on May 23, 2000. Experts overwhelmingly agree that such an announcement would lead Russia to follow suit.
Defenders of the president would no doubt argue that he is waiting until the completion of a strategic nuclear posture review later this year. If, however, that review fails to recommend any substantial movement on launch status, the clock should be advanced significantly toward midnight.
I recommend that your readers email or phone the White House (202-456-1111) and their congressional representatives (202-224-3121) to urge that the president move forward, with all deliberate speed, to take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.
Waldorf, Maryland
Updates
Political secrecy?
The U.S. government has often gone to great lengths to keep the “secrets” of the bomb from the public. In 1979, for example, it tried to block the Progressive from publishing an article by Howard Mor-land about the workings of the H-bomb (see Morland's “What's Left to Protect?” November/December 2000 Bulletin). But as author Danny Stillman discovered last year, the government apparently wants to keep information about China's nukes from the public as well. In January 2000, Stillman, a former intelligence director at Los Alamos who was given unprecedented access to China's nuclear facilities, submitted a 500-page book detailing China's nuclear arsenal to government censors. In mid-June, after waiting 18 months for a ruling on whether he could publish, Stillman filed suit in federal court charging that the government was blocking publication.
Many believe that the government is reticent because Stillman concludes that China did not use stolen U.S. secrets to develop its nuclear capabilities. In December 1999, at about the time Stillman was completing his book, the FBI arrested Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee on charges he gave nuclear secrets to China about how to miniaturize warheads. In September 2000, after a highly publicized investigation during which Lee was kept in solitary confinement, a federal judge ruled that the government had failed to prove its case and apologized to Lee for the treatment he had received (see “Scientist, Fisherman, Gardener… Spy?” by Stephen Schwartz, November/December 2000). Lee's autobiography, My Country Versus Me, is also being reviewed by government censors.
Japan participates fully in all aspects of the international nuclear nonproliferation regimes, including the Guidelines for the Management of Plutonium (iNFCiRc/549), the Nuclear Supplier Guidelines (infcirc/254), the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (infcirc/225), and the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials. The Atomic Energy Law explicitly prohibits the use of nuclear energy for non-peaceful purposes. Japan is the only country in the world that has adopted a policy of not holding surplus plutonium (plutonium for no specific purpose).
The power companies are also fully committed to operating with safety first as their guiding principle. Japan's experience has taught it to press through major regulatory and safety reforms in its system and the utilities have come out stronger in the process. The reform was supplemented by the Japanese utilities' initiative establishing the Nuclear Safety Net to enhance the nuclear industry's safety culture.
In order to attain enhanced national energy security and address global environmental concerns, Japanese utilities must continue their program of developing nuclear power and establishing a nuclear fuel cycle for exclusively peaceful purposes under effective nonproliferation controls.
Washington Office, Federation of Electric Power, Companies of Japan
Koji Kosugi may be out of touch with the current political and economic realities of Japan's plutonium program. As a July 11 headline in Yomiuri, japan's largest-circulation national daily, put it: “Rough is the Road for Pluthermal Program Restart.” The subhead continued: “The obstacles only grow greater and greater.” On July 13, a headline in Asahi revealed, “Central Member of Japan's Nuclear Power Policy Proposes Reconsideration of Reprocessing.”
Long-term energy security is a crucial national priority for Japan, which is why Japan's plutonium program must be abandoned. Even proponents of the breeder admit that, if it were successful, it would supply only 1 percent of Japan's energy needs by mid-century. And even if the pluthermal program were able to restart, it would reduce the consumption of uranium only minimally.
Moreover, Japan's reprocessing plans are a mess. Japan Nuclear Fuels is 500 billion yen in the red and going further into debt by continuing construction of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant. Drastic alterations have been made to cut costs, and a patchwork blueprint has revealed the plant to be outmoded before it is completed.
Kosugi proudly states that Japan has a no-surplus-plutonium policy. But he does not explain why a country with such a policy has so far amassed more than 35 tons of plutonium, with the surplus still spiraling upward, and no clear indication of how it will be consumed. Will the pluthermal program get rid of it? Reprocessing has backfired in France, which now has more surplus plutonium than when its recycling program began.
Kosugi stresses Japan's adherence to the current safeguards regime, but fails to mention the regional dynamic in East Asia. As Michael Arma-cost, then-ambassador to Japan, wrote in 1993, “Can Japan expect that if it embarks on a massive plutonium recycling program that Korea and other nations would not press ahead with reprocessing programs? Would not the perception of Japan's being awash in plutonium and possessing leading-edge rocket technology create anxiety in the region?”
Both Taiwan and South Korea are continuing to press for approval for reprocessing and mox (mixed-oxide fuel) services from British Nuclear Fuels and Cogema. The United States objects, although that position is now under review. Would Kosugi, the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan, and the Japanese government support the establishment of large-scale plutonium infrastructures in Taiwan and South Korea, even if they were under international safeguards?
Green Action, Japan
Greenpeace International, Nuclear Campaigns