From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: MM: DEADLY EXPORT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 09:15:10 GMT

[Taken from the November 1992 Multinational Monitor.  Subscription info below]

DEADLY EXPORT

ON August 24, the Akatsuki-maru freighter left Japan's Yokohama harbor
bound for "La Hague" plutonium plant in France, where it will pick up
a cargo of reprocessed nuclear waste in the form of explosive and highly
toxic plutonium oxide.  Although both the Japanese and French
governments are keeping secret from the public both the date and the
route, any day now the ship, bearing over one ton of plutonium, will
leave France to transport this freight back to Japan.

Japan's acquisition of massive amounts of plutonium exposes the entire
world and its environment to the threat of the deadly substance.  The
Akatsuki-maru and its successors will follow one of several 1 7,000-mile
trans-oceanic routes.  An accident or attack on the ship could lead to
disastrous contamination of the marine ecology and require the
evacuation of populated harbors.  The nations along the ship's route
have both the right and the responsibility to protect the environment
and public health by demanding that plutonium shipments do not enter
their territorial or economic zone waters.  Countries throughout Africa,
South America, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific have requested
information about the route and emergency plans for the shipment.
Within Japan and internationally, citizens and anti-nuclear groups
have organized to oppose the shipment.  Yet the Bush administration has
approved Japan's plutonium reprocessing and shipping plans, despite
vocal opposition from organizations such as Greenpeace International and
the Nuclear Control Institute and U.S.  Senator John Glenn, D-Ohio, and
Representative Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, among others.

If this shipment of plutonium goes ahead as planned, Britain's
Sellafield reprocessing plant, operated by British Nuclear Fuel Ltd.,
will also begin returning plutonium extracted from Japanese nuclear
waste.  Reprocessing nuclear fuel for plutonium, one of the world's
most volatile and lethal compounds, is being touted by the nuclear
industry as the solution to the problem of what to do with the world's
nuclear waste.  Yet reprocessing plutonium greatly exacerbates the
nuclear waste problem because the process of separating plutonium from
other nuclear waste increases the overall volume of hazardous waste 160
times.

Japan will use the plutonium as fuel in its fastbreeder reactor in
Monju.  Theoretically, the reactor, which "breeds" more fuel than it
uses [See "Breeding Disaster," Multinational Monitor, April 1992], will
itself eventually produce enough plutonium to make Japan self-sufficient
in energy.  The Japanese government, which has no oil or uranium
resources, insists that it needs to go through with the plutonium
reprocessing program in the interest of national security.  Yet the
Japanese Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Corp's claim that it needs
plutonium from France for immediate use is based only on incomplete and
highly questionable data that the plant recently released.  According to
Jinzaburo Takagi of the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo
and Paul Leventhal of Nuclear Control Institute, the data appear to
understate the amount of plutonium produced and overstate the amount of
plutonium consumed as fuel in Japan's nuclear program, creating an
artificial shortage in order to justify a "need."
This so-called "need" of the Japanese government, which is seamlessly
enmeshed with the "need" of the nuclear industry for profits, is now
being imposed on the rest of the world.  The Akatsuki-maru plutonium is
the first of between three and five plutonium shipments a year planned
as part of Japan's nuclear breeder reactor program.  Japan intends to
ship up to 45 tons of plutonium before the year 2010 alone.  Plutonium
is one of the world's most toxic radioactive substances, with a
half-life of 24,131 years.  If released into the environment,
plutonium would remain a deadly contaminant for tens of thousands of
years.  Plutonium oxide particles are especially dangerous, as the
particles can be easily inhaled and absorbed into the food chain.

Furthermore, this shipment, and each of those which will follow, will
provide enough plutonium to construct over 120 nuclear weapons.
William Dircks, deputy director of the International Atomic Energy
Agency in Vienna, has repeatedly warned that commercial production of
plutonium is leading to an "international political and security threat"
and has recommended the implementation of Internationally controlled
storage sites for plutonium as an alternative to reprocessing.

Despite the much heralded fall of the nuclear arms race, commercial
plutonium production threatens to overturn any hope for nuclear
non-proliferation in the coming century.  Without strong opposition from
the public, the post-Cold War nuclear industry will generate more
plutonium, and at a faster rate, than the U.S. military ever did, and
will transport it all over the world.  Rather than allowing the creation
of a global plutonium market, citizens groups in all nations should band
together to demand that the nuclear states discontinue all present and
future plans to transport and stockpile plutonium and enact a global ban
on its production and use.

----------
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