Risking Nuclear Proliferation

Under a new U.S.-Japan nuclear-energy agreement, Japan has a 30-year blanket authorization to move around the world more than 100 tons of plutonium--the key ingredient in nuclear weapons. Japan intends to use the plutonium, derived from U.S. uranium, as fuel in nuclear reactors. However, many in Congress believe that the new agreement seriously undercuts the 1978 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, which requires that each shipment of nuclear fuel be approved separately.

Only 15 pounds of plutonium in the wrong hands are sufficient to make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a reality. Under the original agreement, Japan is authorized to ship the dangerous material only by air. Now the Reagan Administration is about to ask Congress to expand the agreement and allow Japan unlimited ocean shipment of the nuclear material.

Almost all of the world’s current nuclear plants run on low-enriched uranium, which, unlike plutonium, is not usable for bombs. Plutonium is a by-product of burning uranium in a nuclear reactor. When the spent uranium fuel is reprocessed, plutonium is part of the residue. The Japanese are currently reprocessing their spent fuel in plants in France and Britain. After reprocessing, the plutonium is to be sent back to Japan to be used to start up so-called breeder reactors, which in theory will produce or “breed” plutonium even as they burn it to produce power. It also would be used in contemporary reactors modified to run on a mixture of uranium and plutonium.

Under the November, 1987, agreement--which went into effect on July 17--the Japanese have permission to fly the plutonium in crash-proof casks over the North Pole, avoiding U.S. airspace. But the casks have failed the required crash tests. Air shipment raises environmental concerns; a single speck of plutonium is enough to cause lung cancer in a person. Sea shipment raises terrorist fears; an internal Pentagon report contends that ships carrying plutonium would be “accessible and vulnerable to attack,” especially when passing through narrow straits like the Panama Canal.

The Reagan Administration argues that Japan should be exempt from the case-by-case rule of the 1978 non-proliferation law because it is a special ally with a stellar record on proliferation; congressional critics fear that the blanket agreement will make it easier to lose track of a small amount of plutonium--with disastrous consequences. It took only 13 pounds of plutonium to destroy Nagasaki.

So, while the United States and the Soviet Union are discussing radical reductions of nuclear arsenals, the Administration is preparing to give the green light for a huge increase in civilian stockpiles of plutonium--greatly increasing the probability that some terrorist group, the Party of God or the Red Army Faction, will one day get the chance to play nuclear blackmail.

Congress must reject the request to expand the plutonium treaty to include unlimited ocean shipment. The United States must return to the prudent case-by-case reviewing method followed by Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter.