Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi apologized for the government's slow response, and postponed the announcement of a new cabinet. A debate has opened up on the country's nuclear industry. At least two previous serious accidents have occurred in the last three years, including an explosion at another plant in Tokaimura. Only the United States and France have more such installations. The JCO plant turned uranium into pellets that are used as nuclear fuel.
Plutonium is the essential element in building nuclear weapons.
In Japan we have no energy resources. U.S. President William Clinton ordered a review of civilian nuclear-fuel processing on October 1, the day after the JCO leak. Such incidents took five lives in the United States from 1958 to 1978. Four days after the accident in Japan, radioactive water leaked inside a nuclear power plant in south Korea, exposing 22 workers. The accident proves that's absolutely not true.