nuclear-news

The plan had the advantage of making allies dependent on technology from corporate giants General Electric Co. and Westinghouse, 

Tepco ‘Deal With Devil’ Signals End to Japan’s Postwar Era Bloomberg, October 21, 2011,“……….Hiroshima Bombing  Japan’s development into the world’s third-biggest user of nuclear energy dates from the last days of the war. Yasuhiro Nakasone, who would later become Prime Minister and a powerful advocate of atomic energy, was serving as a naval officer in Japan when Hiroshima was bombed. After the war, he began the work of persuading the U.S. to sell Japan nuclear technology…..

Japan’s interest coincided with U.S. concern about what to do with its own surplus of weapons-grade plutonium, and the suspicion that created in the Soviet Union, Laura E. Hein wrote in “Fueling Growth — The Energy Revolution and Economic Policy in Postwar Japan.”

U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s solution was the “Atoms for Peace” program to use U.S. plutonium to provide nuclear fuel for its allies.

The plan had the advantage of making allies dependent on technology from corporate giants General Electric Co. and Westinghouse, according to Michael Donnelly, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto who studies Japan’s nuclear program.

“I can’t believe that any decision of this sort would not involve consideration that nuclear energy programs would benefit American manufacturers,” Donnelly said in a phone interview.

CIA Involvement Still, officials in both the U.S. and Japan had to work on persuading the public that nuclear technology could have a civilian use. Nuclear supporters in Japan were helped by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, says Tetsuo Arima, a professor of media studies at Tokyo’s Waseda University who studied declassified documents on postwar relations between the two countries in the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration to establish the link.

Among the CIA’s Japanese allies in the propaganda effort was Matsutaro Shoriki, owner of the Yomiuri newspaper and Nippon Television, Japan’s first commercial TV station. The newspaper — now the world’s biggest with 10 million copies published daily — wrote a series of pro-nuclear articles from Jan. 1954 viewed by the U.S. government as a success, according to the book “Nuclear Power, Shoriki and the CIA,” written by Arima and published in 2008.

Walt Disney The Walt Disney Co. was also roped into the effort. The 1957 cartoon “Our Friend, The Atom,” released as part of the company’s Tomorrowland project and depicting the positive benefits of a world harnessing atomic energy, was run on Shoriki’s TV channel, Arima wrote….

In 1955, the U.S.-Japan Atomic Energy Agreement gave Japan the right to buy nuclear fuel and technology from the U.S…. Intense Pressure……
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-21/tepco-deal-with-devil-signals-end-to-japan-s-postwar-era.html