If Japan pushes forward with its plutonium policy, it is likely to give new impetus to a technology deemed too dangerous by most nuclear nations and opposed by a majority of the Earth's inhabitants. Japan is currently building a nuclear fuel cycle facility to extract plutonium from conventional nuclear reactor wastes. When completed, the Rokkasho fuel complex will be the largest of its kind in the world and will be able to separate five tons of plutonium a year. The potential risks of overseas plutonium transport are enormous. In a collision, shipboard fire, or sinking, this toxin with a half-life of 24,000 years could enter the food chain and cause an environmental disaster of unprecedented magnitude.
Plutonium is also a highly desirable target of terrorists seeking to acquire nuclear arms.
A single plutonium shipment could be made into as many as 150 nuclear bombs. A larger Japanese plutonium stockpile will also pose a serious threat to international security and nuclear non-proliferation. It will make it nearly impossible to dissuade other nations, especially Pacific nations wary of resurgent Japanese military power, from amassing their own nuclear stores under the guise of civilian nuclear programs. This is already a reality in North Korea, where the government, pointing to Japan's own plutonium program, has rebuffed calls by the U.S. and Japanese to dismantle a large reprocessing plant under construction. Current arms reductions efforts also could be undermined if the U.S. and the former Soviet Union find it impossible to destroy their own plutonium stocks in the face of a Japanese stockpile.