THE HAGUE // Japan will hand over more than 315 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium and a supply of highly enriched uranium to the United States – a victory for President Barack Obama’s efforts to secure nuclear materials around the world.
The deal announced by American and Japanese officials on Monday was the first major breakthrough at a two-day nuclear security summit in The Hague.
“This is a very significant nuclear security pledge and activity,” the US energy secretary Ernest Moniz told reporters. “The material will be transferred to the United States for transformation into proliferation-resistant forms.”
Italy and Belgium also announced they had moved excess nuclear materials to the United States for disposal or downgrading under the terms of past agreements.
Italy said about 20kg of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium had been moved from its territory. Belgium said a “significant amount” of the same materials had also gone. Both statements were countersigned by the United States.
The material will be stored in the United States until it is disposed of or made into low-enriched uranium for civilian purposes, the statements added.
Yosuke Isozaki, a senior security adviser to the Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, said handing over the highly enriched uranium and plutonium was part of Japan’s efforts to prevent proliferation and possible abuse of nuclear material by terrorists – the main aim of the summit in the Netherlands.
“Japan shares a vision of a world without nuclear weapons,” he said.
As part of the deal, the US will continue to receive spent reactor fuel from Japan for an additional 10 years. Japan originally received the material from the US and Britain in the 1960s for use in research.
Mr Isozaki said Japan and the US also “have agreed to conduct cutting-edge research together with alternative fuels” allowing more studies about nuclear energy.
Miles Pomper, a nuclear expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, called the return of the materials “a step in the right direction”.
In addition to the weapons-grade material Japan is giving back, it maintains a stockpile of about 9 tonnes of lesser-grade plutonium that could be easily weaponised by a country of Japan’s technological sophistication in a matter of months. That material also could present an attractive target for terrorists.
Additionally, Japan’s new Rokkasho nuclear plant, due to come online this year, is capable of producing almost that many more tonnes of plutonium per year when operational. Yet, with most of Japan’s nuclear plants still shut down in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, there is no apparent use for the material.
“So this is a step forward, but it’s not enough,” Mr Pomper said.
* Associated Press with additional reporting by Reuters
