The area where the earthquake struck is not known to experience natural earthquakes. As earth-shaking booms are a natural feature of underground nuclear weapons testing, the quake led to suspicions North Korea had detonated yet another model of nuke — as it did earlier this month, sparking fears it had successfully developed a hydrogen bomb.
“This event occurred in the area of the previous North Korean Nuclear tests,” the United States Geological Survey wrote on its website. “We cannot conclusively confirm at this time the nature (natural or human-made) of the event. The depth is poorly constrained and has been held to 5km by the seismologist.”
According to the Washington Post, China’s state earthquake-monitoring agency initially believed the test to have been an explosion, although South Korean officials told the Associated Press “the analysis of seismic waves and the lack of sound waves clearly showed that the quake wasn’t caused by an artificial explosion.”
Per the AP, the 3.4-magnitude quake would be much smaller than previous nuclear tests, the weakest of which generated a magnitude 4.3 quake and the strongest of which, the test this month, resulted in a magnitude 6.3 quake. One possible explanation is the region is undergoing aftershocks in the wake of the previous nuclear tests.
“It could be a natural earthquake that really was man-made as the nuclear test would have transferred a lot of stress,” Yonsei University in Seoul earth system sciences professor Hong Tae-kyung told CBC. “The quake is small enough to suspect that it could have been caused by a tunnel collapse, and satellite data shows there have been many landslides in the area since the nuclear test.”
Other than the disquieting pace of North Korean nuclear weapons development, one immediate concern from the ongoing tests is seismological data suggesting the test site might be about to cave in.
Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province concluded earlier this month another test at Punggye-ri could cause the overhead mountain to cave in, potentially releasing large amounts of radioactive material which could drift far beyond the region into neighbouring countries including China.
According to South Korean paper Chosun Ilbo, sources said after the September 3rd test, residents in the area were prohibited from travelling to the capital, Pyongyang, due to possible radioactive contamination.
Quiet energy revolution underway in Japan as dozens of towns go off the grid, Japan Times BY AARON SHELDRICK AND OSAMU TSUKIMORI REUTERS, 24 Sept 17, HIGASHIMATSUSHIMA, MIYAGI PREF. – A Miyagi city’s efforts to rebuild its electrical power system after 3/11 mark a quiet shift away from Japan’s old utility model and toward self-reliant, local generation and transmission.
After losing three-quarters of its homes and 1,100 people in the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, the city of Higashimatsushima in Miyagi Prefecture turned to the government’s “national resilience program,” with ¥3.72 trillion in funding for this fiscal year, to rebuild.
The city of 40,000 chose to construct microgrids and decentralized renewable power generation to create a self-sustaining system in Tohoku capable of producing an average of 25 percent of its electricity without the need of the region’s power utility.
Nuclear phase-out puts burden on S. Korea’s export drive By Kim Eun-jung SEOUL, Sept. 23 (Yonhap) –– South Korea’s nuclear phase-out policy may create a boom for the renewable energy initiative and allay public safety concerns, but it may also send an unwanted signal to the outside world that could hurt the country’s push to expand into the global atomic power generation market.
Since taking office in May, President Moon Jae-in has scrapped plans for new nuclear power plants and vowed not to extend the life cycles of 24 existing reactors, in a bid to end decades of reliance on the controversial energy source.
The latest move was aimed at addressing safety concerns after the 2011 Fukushima disaster and is in line with actions taken by other advanced economies that are turning to renewable energy sources, including the U.S., France and Germany.
This drastic turn from past administrations’ pro-nuclear policies, however, raises questions over South Korea’s status in the global nuclear market, which has seen spike in competition with the rise of state-backed Russian and Chinese companies in recent years.
Seoul policymakers have pledged continued support for overseas projects separate from its domestic energy policy, but industry insiders worry that less enthusiasm for nuclear power could shrink investment in advanced nuclear technologies and give South Korea less bargaining power on the global stage…….http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2017/09/22/0503000000AEN20170922008800320.html
Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) Chairman Shunichi Tanaka held his final press conference in Tokyo’s Minato Ward on Sept. 20 before officially stepping down from his role.
Reflecting on his five-year term in office, Tanaka said, “I tried to maintain independence and transparency,” adding that, “I have absolutely no doubt that I’ve made judgments from a scientific and impartial standpoint, and taken actions based on (the NRA’s) philosophies. This is something that I am proud of.”
However, he also stated that, “The distrust of the public who experienced the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 is an issue that cannot be easily rectified.”
Tanaka became the first chairman of the NRA at the same time the organization was established in September 2012, having previously served as the deputy director general of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute and acting chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission.
During his time as NRA chairman, he led efforts to draw up new regulatory standards based on the lessons learned from the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster, and carried out nuclear power plant screening.
Originally hailing from Fukushima Prefecture, Tanaka says he is planning to live in the prefectural village of Iitate after stepping down as NRA head. “It would be great if I could contribute to the recovery of Fukushima (using my experience at the NRA),” Tanaka said.
The head of Tepco Electric Power company Holdings Inc. promised Wednesday to institute a safety pledge as requested by nuclear regulator, as the company seeks clearance to reactivate undamaged, idle reactors located far from its plant crippled by natural disaster in 2011.
has been calling for the company to make such a pledge part of its legally binding reactor safety program because it operates the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the site of a major nuclear disaster in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami.
President Tomoaki Kobayakawa told the regulator on Wednesday that will stipulate a pledge to build “safety culture” in its program developed for ensuring safe operation of the Nos. 6 and 7 reactors at the company’s power station in Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of coast.
promise will pave the way for the regulator’s safety clearance for the two units — boiling-water reactors that are the same type as the ones that experienced meltdowns in the disaster.
The regulator will soon compile a draft document for the two units that will serve as certification that the utility has satisfied new stricter safety requirements implemented since the nuclear disaster.
It will then consult the economy, trade and industry minister, who oversees the nuclear industry, to confirm that is fit to be an operator. It will also solicit comments from the public before formally giving safety clearance.
Even if the reactors clear the safety checks, local governments in the area on which the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant sits remain cautious about their resumption.
Niigata Gov. Ryuichi Yoneyama, for example, has said it will take “around three to four years” for the utility to win the required local consent for a restart.
said last week was “qualified” as a nuclear plant operator, but that it wanted the utility to express its resolve to ensure safety in a legal document, not just in words.
Safety programs drawn up for reactors need to be approved by the regulator and if it finds a grave violation, it can demand a halt to nuclear power operations from the utility.
“We intend to tackle the unending mission of improving the safety of nuclear power and to complete the decommissioning and compensation of the Fukushima Daiichi complex,” Kobayakawa said at the regulator’s meeting on Wednesday. “We will also make efforts to maintain qualification” as operator of nuclear reactors, he said.
The Nos. 6 and 7 units at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant are the newest among the seven units at the plant. The complex is one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants with a combined output capacity of 8.2 million kilowatts.
For a reactor to be restarted, it first needs to clear the safety requirements introduced in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis. filed for safety assessments of the two units in .
, which is facing massive compensation payments and other costs in the aftermath of one of the world’s worst nuclear crises, has been desperate to resume operation of its idled reactors so it can reduce spending on costly fossil fuel imports for non-nuclear thermal power generation.
While some reactors run by other utilities have resumed operations in by satisfying the new safety regulations, has been under close scrutiny by regulators on whether it is qualified to once again operate a nuclear power plant.
How We Got to North Korea’s Pacific Nuclear Test Threat and What Comes Next It would be the first above-ground detonation in decades and would send tensions into uncharted territory. The Drive BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK, SEPTEMBER 22, 2017 In ever escalating war of words between the United States and Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime in North Korea has reached an entirely new level since President Donald Trump threatened to “totally destroy” the Hermit Kingdom in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. It seems all but guaranteed that the rhetoric will lead to new North Korean provocations, but what’s unprecedented and potentially game-changing is that they could potentially include a full demonstration of a nuclear-armed ballistic missile, or at least an above-ground nuclear weapon test, either which in turn would similarly demand some form of American response.
This latest escalation in tensions between the U.S. government and North Korean officials began on Sept. 19, 2017, when Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly for the first time with fiery remarks, lashing out at not only North Korea, but also Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and other critics of American foreign policy more broadly. He vowed to put the United States interests first in all matters and encouraged the other assembled leaders to do the same. But he reserved some of the most incendiary comments for Kim, who he has now nicknamed “Rocket Man,” and his regime.
“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” he declared. “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary.”
This particular statement drew “audible gasps” from some of the world leaders in attendance, according to The Associated Press. The North Korean delegation had already walked out in protest before Trump even began speaking……..
The string of threats, especially Nikki Haley’s comments, suggest the United states and its allies could easily handle the increasingly worrisome situation with military force if it runs out of other options. This of course is entirely untrue and major conflict with North Korea would be devastating for all the involved parties.
Not surprisingly, this has not prompted a change in the behavior of the North Korean regime or Premier Kim. As we at The War Zone have noted for months, these statements feed into the country’s existing paranoid and propaganda that the United States and its allies are actively looking to destroy it and forcefully eliminate its government.
It has only appeared to give North Korea more of a reason to continue to develop advanced ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons to achieve some relative parity with the United States in order, if nothing else, to preserve the regime’s very existence. Kim said as much himself in a televised rebuttal on Sept. 21, 2017……
Trump continued the cycle on Sept. 22, 2017, as part of a series of Tweets on various topics. “Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!” he posted on the social media site.
If his remarks in front of the United Nations seemed likely to generate a North Korean response, the Tweet sounded closer to a direct challenge. Given Kim’s immediate response to Trump’s threat of total destruction, it seems he will have little room but to make a provocative move in response to this new “test.”
After Kim’s own televised address, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho had already said the North Korean response could include detonating a hydrogen bomb in or over the Pacific Ocean. Earlier in September 2017, North Korea tested what experts believe to be a working thermonuclear device…….
In the future, North Korea may simply need to conduct nuclear weapons tests outside of its own borders since the Punggye-ri underground test site may simply not be able to survive the strain of more powerful thermonuclear designs. The nuclear test earlier in September 2017 appeared to cause the tunnel containing the device to collapse, highlighting the limits of underground testing.
Even if the atmospheric test went as intended, it could be difficult to be entirely sure there would be no inadvertent casualties and the resulting fallout could easily fall on civilian mariners or populated areas……..
despite Nikki Haley’s and H.R. McMaster’s insistence that there are available military options to respond to these growing provocations, as well as Trump’s vague threats, any direct action would be fraught with its own dangers. One of the most likely courses of action, shooting down the missile, carries significant risks as the impact of the interceptor could trigger the device or the radioactive debris could fall over populated areas.
Perhaps more importantly to the viability of America’s still largely unproven ballistic missile defense shield, if the intercepting weapon misses or otherwise fails to achieve the desired effect, it would expose a serious vulnerability to not just North Korea, but the rest of the world…..
In particular, systems that engage the missile as it comes falling back down to earth, such as the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system, have a very narrow window to achieve a “kill.” Furthermore, this means that personnel manning the interceptors would likely be in the direct path the incoming weapon, and if it was fully armed, a nuclear test.
There is very little room for failure in any of these scenarios. Even if the shoot down were to go smoothly, it is possible that it could trigger a larger and immensely destructive conflict on the Korean Peninsula or throughout East Asia. The War Zone’s Tyler Rogoway has highlighted these various issues previously in a deep dive into the United States’ available options in responding to North Korea’s continued provocations……..
All of these options still come with their own risks, though, and there’s still no indication that they would convince Kim to change course. If the North Korean regime’s primary goal is its own survival, it is perfectly rational for them to continue to demonstrate their resolve to respond in kind to American threats.
And despite his comments, Trump’s first step, on Sept. 21, 2017, was to sign a new executive order penalizing any individual or business doing business with North Korea. This follows a trend of steady sanctions against actors and firms outside of North Korea that the United States accuses of enabling the reclusive country’s government.
Trump and other members of his administration repeatedly question Kim’s mental stability, but as we at The War Zone have noted before, he clearly has a coherent plan. We’re still not sure that U.S. government has developed a thought-out strategy to dissuade him from his chosen path.
North Korea ‘threatens Pacific nuclear test’ Sky News, , 22 September 2017 North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho says he believes the North could consider a hydrogen bomb test on the Pacific Ocean of an unprecedented scale, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports.
Mr Ri was speaking to reporters in New York when he was asked what North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had meant when he threatened in an earlier statement the ‘highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history’ against the United States.
North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test, Mr Ri said, although he did not know his leader’s exact thoughts, Yonhap reported.
In an earlier statement Mr Kim said Mr Trump was ‘mentally deranged’ and his comments were ‘the most ferocious declaration of a war in history,’ Mr Kim said the US president’s UN speech on Tuesday confirmed Pyongyang’s nuclear program has been ‘the correct path’.
‘His remarks … have convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last,’ Mr Kim said in the statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency, promising to make Trump ‘pay dearly for his speech’.
Mr Trump had warned the North Korean leader in his UN address on Tuesday that the United States, if threatened, would ‘totally destroy’ the country of 26 million people and mocked Kim as a ‘rocket man’ on a suicide mission………
He offered more vitriol for Mr Trump, saying he was ‘unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country, and he is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician.’
Moon and Trump agree on South Korea purchase of state-of-the-art US weaponry during summit
Hankyoreh Sep.22,2017The deal is reportedly set to include nuclear powered submarines
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump agreed on Sept. 21 on a plan for South Korea to introduce state-of-the-art US weaponry or develop its own to counter North Korea’s recent nuclear and missile provocations. Later the same day, Moon had a luncheon and trilateral summit with Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, where the three agreed that the entire international community “must apply the maximum intensity sanctions and pressure so that North Korea cannot withstand it anymore and must come to the table for dialogue.” ……http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/812155.html
North Korea: Trump and Kim call each other mad, BBC, 22 September 2017
Kim Jong-un has said remarks by “deranged” US President Donald Trump have convinced him he is right to develop weapons for North Korea.
In an unprecedented personal statement, Mr Kim said Mr Trump would “pay dearly” for a UN speech where he threatened to “totally destroy” the North if the US was forced to defend itself.
Mr Trump responded that the “madman… will be tested like never before”.
The two countries have engaged in ever more heated rhetoric in recent months.
Mr Kim ended his statement by saying he would “surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire”.
China responded to the war of words, warning that the situation was “complicated and sensitive”.
“All relevant parties should exercise restraint instead of provoking each other,” said Foreign Minister spokesman Lu Kang.
Russia also urged restraint, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov describing the rhetoric between the two leaders as a “kindergarten fight between children”……http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41356836
the theories behind many of the proposed systems aren’t new and often date back to the 1950s and ’60s. Some experimental plants have been built, such as the fast breeder reactors in the U.K. and U.S. Most suffered from crippling cost or design problems or were abandoned after nuclear accidents.
“Most if not all of these so-called advanced reactor designs have been around for decades,”
“Different designs have different problems. I don’t think anyone can be or should be confident that these problems can be resolved merely by throwing money and hiring engineers and scientists.”
Nuclear Experts Head to China to Test Experimental Reactors, Bloomberg By
Stephen Stapczynski China is becoming the testing ground for a new breed of nuclear power stations designed to be safer and cheaper, as scientists from the U.S. and other Western nations find it difficult to raise enough money to build experimental plants at home.
China National Nuclear Power Co. this month announced a joint venture to build and operate a “traveling wave reactor” in Hebei province, designed by Bellevue, Washington-based TerraPower LLC, whose chairman is Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates. The development follows Canada’s SNC-Lavalin, which has agreed to build a new recycled-fuel plant with China National Nuclear Corp. and Shanghai Electric Group, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is working with the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics on a salt-cooled system……..
“The outlook for nuclear power is brighter there than anywhere else in the world,” said M. V. Ramana, a professor at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia. “It is not so difficult for a company developing a nuclear reactor design to find a partner.”
The systems proposed belong to the so-called fourth generation of reactors. The current generation under construction include enhanced safety features following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, but still typically use traditional fuel rods, cooled by water under pressure. Both Areva SA and Westinghouse Electric Co. are slated to turn on their current-generation nuclear reactors in the next year in China — well ahead of any other nation, despite delays.
Recycled Fuel
Some Generation IV designs aim to cut construction costs by using coolants that work at atmospheric pressure — reducing the need for massive containment structures. Many recycle their fuel, reducing the need for uranium, and in some cases are fail-safe without intervention if something goes wrong…….
Coolants include liquid sodium, gases and molten metal. Some use thorium instead of uranium to power the reaction.
Still, the theories behind many of the proposed systems aren’t new and often date back to the 1950s and ’60s. Some experimental plants have been built, such as the fast breeder reactors in the U.K. and U.S. Most suffered from crippling cost or design problems or were abandoned after nuclear accidents.
“Most if not all of these so-called advanced reactor designs have been around for decades,” said Ramana at the Liu Institute. “Different designs have different problems. I don’t think anyone can be or should be confident that these problems can be resolved merely by throwing money and hiring engineers and scientists.”
Computer Models
TerraPower’s traveling-wave design is based on research by Saveli Feinberg, a physicist who first proposed it in the 1950s. Levesque says that advancements in computing in the last decade have revolutionized the ability to develop these technologies. “You couldn’t get it near the concept without the computer modeling,” he said.
Yet computers alone won’t prove the technology without a working plant.
“What they really need is to construct research reactors,” said Allison Macfarlane, former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “And that is really expensive.”………
Areva is not currently working with Chinese teams to develop a fourth generation reactor, spokesman Mathias Schuch said in an email. Westinghouse didn’t respond to requests for comment on next-generation reactors………
“Nuclear can be a difficult industry and it needs to be heavily regulated,” Macfarlane said. “You can make rather a big expensive mess if you don’t get it right. Only one accident will seriously affect the entire industry. There are very few industries like that.”
Developers say the industry is over-regulated. Michael F. Keller, president of Hybrid Power Technologies LLC said the NRC is a “bureaucratic straight jacket” that creates a massive financial burden on the deployment of advanced reactors. “As advanced reactors are generally passively fail-safe, there is no rational reason to apply the grossly overly-complex regulations currently in use,” he said.
It is the second time a court has ruled against Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. in a suit filed by residents forced to abandon their homes when three reactor cores melted following the deadly 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which knocked out their cooling systems.
The triple meltdown spewed massive amounts of radioactive material into the air.
The Chiba District Court awarded ¥376 million to 42 of the 45 plaintiffs who fled Fukushima Prefecture for Chiba Prefecture and filed the suit in March 2013, seeking around ¥2.8 billion in damages from the government and Tepco.
The focal point of the Chiba case was whether the government and Tepco were able to foresee the huge tsunami that hit the seaside plant on March 11, 2011, and take preventive measures beforehand. Conflicting claims were made by the parties regarding the government’s long-term earthquake assessment, which was made public in 2002.
The assessment, made by the earthquake research promotion unit, predicted a 20 percent chance of a magnitude 8 earthquake occurring along the Japan Trench in the Pacific Ocean, including the area off Fukushima, within 30 years.
Based on the assessment, the plaintiffs argued that, with the plant standing on ground roughly 10 meters above sea level, a tsunami higher than that level striking the plant could have been predicted.
They claimed the disaster was therefore preventable by placing emergency generators on higher ground, and that the government should have made Tepco take such measures by exercising its regulatory powers.
The government and Tepco, for their part, claimed the assessment was not established knowledge, and that even if they had foreseen a tsunami higher than the elevation of the plant and taken measures against it, they cannot be held liable as the actual tsunami was much higher, at around 15.5 meters.
The government also argued that it obtained regulatory powers to force Tepco to take anti-flooding measures only after a legislative change following the disaster.
In Friday’s ruling, the court found the state not liable, saying that while the government indeed has such powers, not exercising them was not too unreasonable.
The Chiba case is among around 30 similar lawsuits brought by groups of people forced to evacuate by the nuclear disaster.
In March, the Maebashi District Court in Gunma recognized negligence on the part of not just Tepco, but also the government, saying they were able to foresee a tsunami high enough to inundate the plant.
At the time, it was the first such ruling issued among around 30 similar suits and the first to rule in favor of plaintiffs.
The Maebashi court acknowledged the state had regulatory authority over Tepco even before 3/11, noting that “failing to exercise it is strikingly irrational and illegal.”
But because the court awarded to 62 of 137 plaintiffs a total of ¥38.55 million in damages — far less than the ¥1.5 billion sought in total — many of the plaintiffs have appealed the district court decision.
In the Chiba suit, the 45 plaintiffs, including four who evacuated voluntarily, sought ¥20 million each in compensation for their evacuations and the loss of their hometowns, jobs and personal relationships because their lives were uprooted.
The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, causing multiple meltdowns and hydrogen blasts at the nuclear plant.
As of the end of August 2017, around 55,000 people who lived in Fukushima Prefecture at the time of the disaster remained at the locations where they evacuated, both within and outside the prefecture.
Tighter sanctions on North Korea could have a harsh humanitarian impactThe Conversation Donald Trump has announced even more sanctions on North Korea, this time targeting anyone who does business there. His move comes hot on the heels of UN Security Council Resolution 2375, passed in response to North Korea’s sixth nuclear test, which marks a new stage in the world’s attempts to squeeze the Pyongyang government.
The resolution takes what was already a tough sanctions regime focused on nuclear and military-related trade and tries to exert broader pressure on the country’s economy, embargoing North Korean textile exports, capping the dispatch of additional North Korean workers overseas, and limiting exports of refined petroleum and crude oil to North Korea.
The US mission to the UN claimed that these measures amount to the “strongest sanctions ever”. But the measures contained within sit at odds with a claim made in the resolution’s article 26, namely that the measures “are not intended to have adverse humanitarian consequences for the civilian population of the DPRK”………
Hit hard
Restricting North Korean energy imports, for one, cannot but have an impact on the North Korean people themselves. A recent report by the Nautilius Institute argues that the military is likely to have access to considerable stockpiles of oil, even as ordinary North Korean citizens do not.
Similarly, the textile sector is a significant provider of jobs: the most recent North Korean census in 2008 showed that nearly 400,000 workers were employed in the textile manufacturing sector – and that was before the rapid growth of Chinese outsourcing to the North……….
Tipping the balance
Because North Korea is the world’s lowest-spending nuclear state, the level of economic stress needed to halt funding to the country’s nuclear weapons programme probably cannot be applied without severe human costs. There is also no guarantee that even extreme levels of hardship brought about by effective sanctions will produce a popular North Korean revolution. During the mass starvation of the 1990s, for example, there were no recorded incidents of significant civil unrest and the regime seemed resilient……..
Tipping the balance
Because North Korea is the world’s lowest-spending nuclear state, the level of economic stress needed to halt funding to the country’s nuclear weapons programme probably cannot be applied without severe human costs. There is also no guarantee that even extreme levels of hardship brought about by effective sanctions will produce a popular North Korean revolution. During the mass starvation of the 1990s, for example, there were no recorded incidents of significant civil unrest and the regime seemed resilient…….
To be sure, not all sanctions are ill-advised. But as the scope of multilateral sanctions is extended to target everyday North Koreans’ livelihoods, it’s crucial to ask whether this approach is likely to succeed. Given just how resilient the North Korean regime has so far been in the face of intense international pressure, the chances seem slim. https://theconversation.com/tighter-sanctions-on-north-korea-could-have-a-harsh-humanitarian-impact-84299
Under the guise of a civil nuclear program, Japan has become a de-facto nuclear weapons state without so far having to take that next fateful step.
On Thursday, a shipment of 700 kilograms of plutonium arrived in Japan after a journey by sea from the French port of Cherbourg. That’s enough material for more than 100 nuclear weapons.
The plutonium – in the form of atomic fuel known as MOX, a mix of uranium and plutonium oxide – is for use in the Takahama-4 reactor, owned by Kansai Electric Power Co. and located on Wakasa Bay, in western Japan near Osaka.
There have been six shipments of such highly toxic cargoes since 1999, the result of an agreement to send radioactive spent fuel in Japan for reprocessing in France and the UK, and then to be shipped back as plutonium MOX fuel for use in Japan’s reactors.
Putting aside the reactor fuel issue for the moment, Japan’s plutonium program must be seen in the context of the nuclear arms proliferation dynamic that has existed for decades in Northeast Asia, but which today has taken on even greater urgency owing to North Korea’s nuclear weapon program.
Map of Japan’s nuclear plants. Photo: Japan Atomic Industries Forum, 2016.
There is no question that Japan has the technical capability to build an advanced nuclear weapons arsenal.
There have been over the decades multiple references to it taking less than six months for Japan to build an atomic weapon – a credible timeframe if it’s true as reported more 20 years ago that a design or designs already exist in the country.
However, to build a ‘credible’ arsenal of weapons would require several years at least.
More important than any actual timeframe are the external factors that would lead a Japanese government to move to nuclear weaponization.
This debate is stirring in Japan. In a TV Asahi program on September 6, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba suggested a review was needed of Japan’s so-called three non-nuclear principles: Not producing, possessing, or allowing nuclear weapons into Japan.
Ishiba asked the question if Japan is under the US nuclear umbrella then isn’t it necessary to allow US nuclear weapons into the country to deter threats from North Korea?
It’s clear that without a peaceful resolution to the underlying security threats in the region, there is an increasing possibility that policy makers in Tokyo – backed by Washington – will decide that Japan should weaponize its plutonium stockpile.
We have not reached that point yet, but without a fundamental change in thinking and policy, Japan’s nuclear bomb in the basement may not remain there for very much longer.
But back to Japan’s plutonium stockpiles and the question of why the only country attacked by a nuclear weapon and one that espouses the three non-nuclear principles has large amounts of the bomb-making material.
To answer that question requires looking back to the 1950s and a policy that was spearheaded by the United States, but soon adopted by Japan’s Science and Technology Agency established by former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone.
The policy was to build new types of nuclear power plants, or so-called Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs), worldwide that would be fueled with plutonium reprocessed from spent uranium fuel. As FBRs produce more fuel than they burn – hence the name “breeder” – they would in turn generate plutonium to fuel yet more FBRs.
While the idea seems a solution for processing spent fuel and producing more fuel for FBRs, the problem is fast breeder reactor programs failed worldwide, including in Japan.
Japan’s principle FBR started up in 1994 and was called Monju – named after a Buddhist deity for wisdom. However, a fire broke out at Monju 18 months after it opened, which shut the plant down for 14 years.
Monju nuclear reactor. Photo: IAEA Energy/Flickr
It restarted in May 2010, but weeks later a 3.3 metric-ton fuel exchange device fell into the reactor, which shut it down again for good, though to add to the fiasco its computers were later hacked and data stolen.
This effectively ended Japan’s FBR ambitions, though it took two decades and a total investment of more than US$10 billion for the government to finally make the wise decision to terminate Monju in December 2016.
However, Tokyo had other motives for commitment to a plutonium fuel cycle.
By the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, plans to build commercial light water reactors across Japan, such as at Takahama and Fukushima, faced strong opposition from local communities and activists.
To appease the opposition, the government and utilities said the new reactors would not become nuclear waste sites because the spent fuel would be shipped for reprocessing in the UK and France. This solved, temporarily, a major nuclear waste problem at least for Japan.
In total over 7,000 tons of such fuel went off to Europe during the decades up to the mid 1990’s.
During that time, the plants reprocessing Japan’s spent fuel at la Hague in France and Sellafield in the UK became synonymous with accidents, nuclear waste discharges into the ocean and atmosphere, and public health concerns.
While the Japanese contracts were lucrative for the two state owned companies that operated the Sellafield and la Hague plants –Cogema/AREVA in France and British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) in the UK – both were to become failed entities.
The Sellafield site is now managed by a UK government agency and absorbs most of the nation’s nuclear decommissioning budget estimated well in excess of US$100 billion.
As failures engulfed Japan’s Monju fast-breeder reactor and shut it down, the government had to figure out what to do with the thousands of kilograms of plutonium that would be returning to Japanese shores to fuel a fleet of FBR’s that didn’t exist.
The answer, which brings us back to the cargo that arrived in Japan this week, was plutonium MOX fuel that could be used in existing commercial light water reactors.
The first MOX shipments in 1999 were for use in Fukushima and Takahama reactors.
However, in the case of the MOX delivered to Takahama, activists revealed that the fuel had been manufactured with falsified quality certification, leading to its return shipment to the UK.
In the case of the Fukushima plant, citizens from the prefecture, supported by evidence from Greenpeace, took Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO the plant owner, to court over the quality control of the fuel.
While the citizens group lost the case, AREVA was instructed to release vital safety data, which they refused to do. The ensuing controversy led the then Fukushima Governor Eisaku Sato to refuse to permit loading of the plutonium fuel.
It sat in the cooling pool at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor until August 2010 when TEPCO finally loaded the 32 assemblies of 235 kilograms of plutonium into reactor unit 3.
This was just six months before the Fukushima plant was hit by the strongest earthquake ever recorded in Japan and flooded by a tsunami that caused triple reactor meltdowns on March 11, 2011, including reactor unit 3.
A worker in protective suit works on the roof of the No.4 reactor building of the crippled atomic plant in Fukushima prefecture February 20, 2012. Reuters/Issei Kato
Without the actions of Japanese citizens and others around the world, TEPCO would almost certainly have spent the past decade through to 2011 loading many tons of plutonium MOX fuel into the Fukushima Daiichi reactors.
The meltdown of this fuel would have been far more severe and with greater onsite and offsite radiological consequences than the reality at the accident site today, which itself will take decades and tens of billions of dollars to clean up.
Worse still, tons of high temperature spent MOX fuel would have been sitting in Fukushima’s spent fuel pools.
If the Fukushima reactors had been loaded with plutonium MOX, then the warning from the Atomic Energy Commission to then Prime Minister Naoto Kan in late March 2011 that the loss of control at the spent fuel pools at the plant may require the evacuation of Tokyo, may well have become a reality.
Of the five reactors now operating in Japan, three are loaded with plutonium MOX fuel. However, the threat from Japan’s plutonium obsession could be about to get a lot worse.
Japan has built its own US$21 billion nuclear spent fuel reprocessing facility in Rokkasho-mura in Aomori prefecture, near Hokkaido. (Yes, the same Hokkaido North Korea has recently taken to firing missiles over.)
The Rokkasho nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Japan’s Aomori prefecture. Wikimedia Commons.
The Rokkasho story sounds more than a little similar to Monju, just more expensive.
Rokkasho was supposed to be completed in 1997, but due to multiple construction and equipment failures, it was delayed and has since missed repeated start up dates. It’s now 20 years behind schedule and has a new opening set for 2018.
Assuming Rokkasho does eventually open, it was built to process spent fuel to produce plutonium primarily for use in fast-breeder reactors.
As pointed out, Japan’s only fast-breeder reactor, Monju, has been permanently shut so what happens to the 8,000 kilograms of plutonium Rokkasho was to produce each year?
The answer it appears lies in an atomic power plant being built at the northern tip of Aomori prefecture that will contain the Ohma Advanced Boiling Water reactor.
Now planned to start up in 2024, this reactor is intended to have a full MOX core, which would contain over 5 tons of plutonium and an annual demand of around 1.7 tons.
The safety implications of what would be a unique reactor worldwide operating with a full plutonium MOX core are enormous.
One reason why citizens and the city of Hakodate over the Tsugaru straits in Hokkaido have filed court challenges seeking to halt the Ohma plant’s construction. A court judgement is expected later this year.
Like Monju before, the prospects for operation of Ohma are dire and unlikely to solve Japan’s self inflicted plutonium hangover. But that also may be the point – the strategic and national security rationale for the program remains central for a government increasingly nationalistic in tone and outlook.
Under the guise of a civil nuclear program, Japan has become a de-facto nuclear weapons state without so far having to take that next fateful step.
The MOX shipment this week is merely one further fig leaf for a plutonium and nuclear program that was always so much more than about energy.
How long can the Japanese government defend such a policy? We may be about to see in 2018 when the US Japan Peaceful
Kim Jong-un with nuclear weapon engineers in this undated photo released by Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang September 3, 2017. KCNA via REUTERS
Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, that provides sanction for Japan’s program, is up for renewal.
Given the incumbents in the Prime Minister office in Tokyo and the White House, don’t expect much deep reflection (or policy reversal) on what it means for a nation in a region on the edge of major conflict to possess the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons plutonium outside the declared nuclear weaponized states.
Instead, ending this decades long multi-billion dollar program will, as ever, be secured by the dedication of the people of Japan and their allies around the world concerned as they are with public safety and real security built on peace.
Shaun Burnie is a senior nuclear specialist with Greenpeace Germany, Tokyo. He is co-author of “Nuclear Proliferation in Plain Sight: Japan’s Plutonium Fuel Cycle–A Technical and Economic Failure But a Strategic Success” Japan Focus, March 2016, available at http://apjjf.org/2016/05/Burnie.html. He has worked on nuclear issues worldwide for more than three decades, including since 1991 on Japan’s plutonium and nuclear policy. sburnie@greenpeace.org
Nuclear physicist, Professor Frank Barnaby, is formerly of the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment and Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI – from 1971-1981). Prof. Barnaby testified to the Fukushima District Court against TEPCO’s plans for MOX use in Fukushima Daiichi 3 in 2000, and is the author of multiple books on nuclear weapons design and policy.
Japan has learned absolutely nothing from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster. This is not going to end well!
This is a mouthful, read this:
“Nuclear fuel reprocessed in France returned to Japan on Thursday for use in a reactor as the country tries to burn more plutonium amid international concerns about its stockpile.”
“The need to reduce its plutonium stockpile adds to Japan’s push to restart reactors, aside from also needing to generate power. It would require 16 to 18 reactors to burn MOX to keep Japan’s plutonium stockpile from growing when the Rokkasho plant starts up, according to government and utility officials.”
TOKYO- Nuclear fuel reprocessed in France returned to Japan on Thursday for use in a reactor as the country tries to burn more plutonium amid international concerns about its stockpile.
Kansai Electric Power Co said the shipment arrived for use at the No. 4 reactor at its Takahama plant in Fukui Prefecture. The reactor is one of only five reactors currently operating in Japan.
A specialized ship, the Pacific Egret, was seen docked just outside one plant as the heavily protected shipment was brought inside under extremely tight security. The utility said it cannot provide details such as the amount of the fuel. The new fuel is expected to be loaded after the reactor’s regular safety check planned next year.
Japan has a stockpile of 47 tons of plutonium – 10 tons at home and the rest in Britain and France, which reprocess and store spent fuel for Japan as the country still lacks its own capacity to do so. Experts say the amount could be enough to make thousands of atomic bombs, although utility operators deny such risk, saying the material is stored safely and monitored constantly.
Japan plans to start up its Rokkasho reprocessing plant next year, but critics say that would only add to the stockpile problem and nuclear security concerns.
Without the prospect of achieving a plutonium-burning fast reactor in near future, Japan has resorted to burning MOX, a mixture of plutonium and uranium fuel, in conventional reactors.
The need to reduce its plutonium stockpile adds to Japan’s push to restart reactors, aside from also needing to generate power. It would require 16 to 18 reactors to burn MOX to keep Japan’s plutonium stockpile from growing when the Rokkasho plant starts up, according to government and utility officials.
Only three reactors, including two at Takahama, use MOX, with a fourth one expected to start up next year. Restarts come slowly amid persistent ant-nuclear sentiment among the public since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident and stricter standards under the post-Fukushima safety requirement.
Japan earthquake: A strong quake has hit the Asian island not far from the Fukushima nuclear power station,news.com.au 21 Sept 17
JAPAN has recorded a strong earthquake off its east coast and just 300km away from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. AN earthquake has struck off the east coast of Japan — just 320 kilometres east of Fukushima nuclear plant.
The tremor is said to have had a magnitude of 6.1, according to the US Geological Society (USGS).
The American scientific agency, which tracks natural disasters around the world, said the quake happened 281 kilometres from Fukushima nuclear power plant.
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