nuclear-news

History of deception in Japan’s development of nuclear reprocessing

Japan would have to do what the Americans and Europeans had failed to do – make an experimental breeder program a commercial success. 

during the Reagan administration – legislation that dramatically changed U.S. policy. The United States ceded virtually all control of U.S.-origin nuclear materials shipped to Japan.

 International corporations and officials sacrificed the safety and security of the public to carry out the deception. Under the guise of a peaceful nuclear power program, they made huge profits.

United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium, DC Bureau By Joseph Trento,   April 9th, 2012“……Energy has always been Japan’s Achilles’ heel. Her need for oil in the face of an American embargo triggered Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and the continued shortage was a recurring theme in her defeat in that war. Only one act could take more credit for Japan’s humiliation – the splitting of the atom that gave birth to the nuclear bomb. Now Japan would turn that same atom to its own purposes — to ensure a stable source of energy well into the next century and, equally important, to ensure that the homeland never again suffered the indignity of defeat.

Japan approached the nuclear problem the same way it tackled the electronics and automobile industries. A core group of companies were each given key tasks with long-term profit potential. Then the government nurtured these companies with whatever financial, technological and regulatory support needed to assure their success. The strategy worked brilliantly to bring Japan from post-war oblivion to economic dominance in a single generation.

The five companies designated for the development of nuclear technologies had to make major strides beyond the conventional light water reactors that had become fixtures in Japan under U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program in the 1950s. Japan would have to do what the Americans and Europeans had failed to do – make an experimental breeder program a commercial success. Their hubris convinced them that they could. The Japanese, after all, were the masters of the industrial process. They had turned out automobiles, televisions and microchips superior to the Americans, with better quality and at less cost. Nuclear accidents are almost always the result of human error: sloppy operators without the proper education or training or who did not install enough redundancies. Such things happen to Americans and Russians, but not to Japanese…….

From a secret meeting between U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato in the 1960s and the participation of several subsequent American and Japanese leaders, the secret transfer of nuclear technology was part of an international strategy to fortify Japan against an ever-escalating East Asian arms race. This policy culminated during the Reagan administration in legislation that dramatically changed U.S. policy. The United States ceded virtually all control of U.S.-origin nuclear materials shipped to Japan.

To the detriment of the world and her people, the Japanese government exploited the Japanese public’s well-known abhorrence of nuclear weapons to discourage the media and historians from delving into its nuclear weapons activities. Consequently, until the March 2011 tragedy, the Japanese nuclear industry had largely remained hidden from critical eyes. The less than thorough International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s proliferation safeguard agency, also turned a blind eye.

In a rare glimpse of a Japanese industry that has remained top secret for so many decades, our investigation raises serious concerns about Japanese and Western nuclear policies and the officials who shaped those policies during and after the Cold War. International corporations and officials sacrificed the safety and security of the public to carry out the deception. Under the guise of a peaceful nuclear power program, they made huge profits….. http://www.dcbureau.org/201204097128/national-security-news-service/united-states-circumvented-laws-to-help-japan-accumulate-tons-of-plutonium.html

August 10, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, Japan