Nuclear Weapons 300 - Concerns Over Plutonium Production in Japan, China and South Korea
Plutonium-239 and Uranium-235 are used to create nuclear warheads. Nuclear reactors generate plutonium as the nuclear fuel is burned. Plutonium can be extracted from the spent nuclear fuel. Expanding capacity to purify plutonium in Japan, China and South Korea is of great concern with respect to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Japan has been working on a plutonium production plant at Rokkasho for twenty five years. They have had many problems there and have only refined small amounts of plutonium. Now they have announced that they are going to greatly expand production beginning in 2018. They intend to produce about eighteen thousand pounds of plutonium a year. The intended purpose of this ramp up in production is to create fuel for their nuclear reactors and one fast breeder reactor. However, they have only restarted five of their power reactors since all were shut down following the disaster at Fukushima in 2011 and they have shut down their only fast breeder reactor. This means that if they carry out their plan, thousands of pounds of plutonium generated by the Rokkasho plant will accumulate before it is needed. Each year’s production of plutonium at Rokkasho could be used to make one thousand nuclear warheads should Japan decide to invest in a nuclear arsenal.
China has ordered a plutonium production plant from France with the same capacity as the Japanese plant at Rokkasho. A massive public protest caused China to abandon the first site selected for construction of the plant but China is going to proceed with construction when a new site is found. They want to have the plant in operation by 2030. China plans to use the plutonium produced by the plant to fuel a fast breeder reactor that it intends have operational between 2040 and 2050. This means that China will be producing about eighteen thousand pounds of plutonium a year for ten years before it will be needed to fuel the reactor. Ten thousand nuclear warheads could be produced with that plutonium. China has chosen to maintain only a few hundred nuclear warheads in its arsenal but should its nuclear policies change, it could greatly expand its stock of nuclear warheads with the plutonium from the plant.
South Korea has an arrangement with the U.S. that prohibits it from refining spent nuclear fuel from the U.S. to produce plutonium. They are not happy about that and point out Japan is allowed to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. The new S.K. President is against nuclear power and plutonium production but he won the presidency with only forty percent of the vote over a candidate who said that he wanted to secure permission to refine spent nuclear fuel. There are opposition parties in S.K. who have openly said that they would like S.K. to have their own nuclear weapons as a counter balance to the nuclear weapons possessed by North Korea.
These three countries in Southeast Asia are suspicious of their neighbors. Japan is worried about China’s nuclear arsenal. China is concerned that either Japan or South Korea might gain nuclear weapons. South Korea is worried about N.K. and China. It would be best for the U.S. to do everything it can to convince all three of these countries to give up reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for plutonium. Many citizens of each country are against such reprocessing. Reprocessing does not really make much economic sense for and of the three countries. If one starts piling up excess plutonium, it might lead the other two to do the same, increasing the possibility that such plutonium might find its way into nuclear weapons.
Rokkasho reprocessing plant in Japan:
