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2011 October 12 - 18 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Control over plutonium

US strategy influence on Japan’s nuclear energy policy (Part 3)

The U. S. government under President Eisenhower rapidly increased its productive capacity of nuclear weapons. What made this possible was that the United States achieved a way to acquire the essential nuclear material, uranium, and exclusively exercise its control over plutonium which is produced through uranium combustion and then used for nuclear weapons production.

Second objective

In a policy paper (NSC5431/1) adopted on August 13, 1954, the National Security Council (NSC) placed importance on an agreement on nuclear energy concluded with Belgium.

In the minutes of a NSC meeting which adopted the policy paper, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chair Lewis Strauss said that the aim of the agreement was to acquire fissionable materials (uranium) from the Belgian Congo. He added that with this in mind, the U.S. government contracted with Belgium to build a power reactor there.

According to Strauss, President Eisenhower delivered his “Atoms for Peace” speech on December 8, 1953 with two “great objectives” in mind. One was to obtain a massive amount of nuclear materials which can be used for both military and non-military purposes in return for providing other nations nuclear materials and nuclear energy technology for “peaceful purposes.” The other was to recover all nuclear materials offered by the United States to foreign countries.

The minutes states that Strauss explained that “the reprocessing produces plutonium, an important weapon material” and “[t]herefore, … the United States must stipulate that these by-products be returned to the U.S. for reprocessing and that we would retain the plutonium.”

This showed the U.S. intention to use plutonium for weapons production while preventing other countries from diverting the use of plutonium to military purposes. In the U.S. simulation of the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear power generation is integrated into the process of nuclear weapons development.

Restrictions placed on other countries

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 included regulations regarding the government control over nuclear materials as conditions to allow power companies to enter into nuclear power generation.

Even when the U.S. government reached an agreement with other nations, including Japan, it required them to include severe restrictions on reprocessing in which plutonium is extracted from burned uranium. The U.S. government also demanded that it can withdraw its enriched uranium at any time from the countries the U.S. exported it to on national-security grounds. The existing Japan-U.S. agreement on nuclear energy maintains this framework.

(To be continued)