Japan’s Energy Plan May Fuel Spread of Plutonium : Asia: New reactor could be first step in making Japan self-sufficient. But critics say it aids North Korea.

While the world struggles to block North Korea from building atomic bombs, Japan is pursuing a plutonium energy program that critics say undermines such anti-proliferation efforts.

A prototype “fast breeder” plutonium nuclear reactor is set to begin operation next month in an isolated coastal valley near this old Japan Sea fishing port. It is the first in a planned series of plutonium-fueled reactors that could eventually make Japan virtually self-sufficient in energy.

But the program gives North Korea an excuse to pursue its own production of plutonium, which seems intended for nuclear arms--an issue of top concern to the Clinton Administration. Washington has been trying, without notable success, to block that Communist state’s effort through International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

The hard-line Pyongyang regime claims its research is peaceful but charges that Japan’s effort aims at stockpiling plutonium for possible weapons use. Tokyo vehemently denies this charge.

But critics at home and abroad say that even if Japan’s intentions are entirely peaceful, in a world trying to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, it is simply too risky for anyone to build this kind of reactor.

Breeder reactors not only use plutonium as fuel but also convert uranium into more plutonium than they consume. The main attraction of the technology is that this newly created plutonium can be concentrated and itself used as fuel in a continuing cycle that holds hope for almost inexhaustible energy supplies.

But plutonium is a far more dangerous substance than uranium--the fuel used in most nuclear power plants in Japan and abroad. Plutonium is intensely radioactive, and in the concentrations needed for breeder reactors, it is directly usable as the raw material for atomic bombs, which is not the case for other kinds of nuclear reactor fuel.

The new government-owned research reactor near Tsuruga will provide the first test of an energy strategy conceived in the 1950s. Plans call for progressively larger facilities to be built until the program reaches fruition in the 2030s with construction of economically viable plutonium power plants. If all goes well, Japan could also export the technology to other countries.

U.S. government policy toward Japan’s program is ambiguous. Washington has never exercised its power, as a supplier of uranium to Japan, to directly block the drive to build plutonium-fueled energy plants. But embassy officials here have consistently opposed their development.

“Our basic policy, for quite a few years, is that we’ve been against it,” said a U.S. diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We are trying to discourage the Japanese on plutonium.”

The major immediate problem, this diplomat said, is that Japan’s possession of large quantities of plutonium makes it all the more difficult to curb plutonium production in North Korea. “It’s hard to go to North Korea and say, ‘You can’t do this,’ when Japan does have a very active program,” he said.

There are also some fears that Japan itself might someday make nuclear weapons, as well as concerns that terrorists or agents of renegade nations could raid Japan’s stockpiles to get material for bombs.

During the George Bush Administration, the diplomat said, another embassy official “tried very hard to get the State Department involved in telling the Japanese we’re very much against this. But politically it never happened.”

Japan is unlikely to abandon its program, he added. “Energy security is an important part of their national policy,” he explained. “If you have your own breeder reactor program, you certainly wouldn’t need outside energy sources.”

The use of plutonium in a “fast breeder” reactor provides Japan a more technically advanced option than current uranium-fueled reactors.

The description “fast breeder” comes from the use of fast-moving neutrons--a kind of subatomic particle--to breed more plutonium than is used up.

At the reactor outside Tsuruga, plutonium pellets are now being packed into a core surrounded by uranium. Once enough fuel is inserted--a process due for completion in April--a chain reaction occurs. The plutonium breaks down into other elements, giving off heat, which is used for electric power. Neutrons are also emitted, striking uranium atoms and turning them into plutonium. The 280-megawatt reactor is designed to produce 1.2 tons of plutonium for every ton it consumes.

The only resource limitation is the availability of uranium--and enough of that exists to keep this kind of process going on a large scale for many centuries, long after the world’s supply of oil is exhausted.

In acknowledgment of the risks as well as the potential benefits of their endeavor, the builders of this first reactor named it “Monju,” a Buddhist figure symbolizing wisdom, who sits calm and serene in total mastery upon a fearsome lion.

“The Monju Buddha controlled the lion with wisdom,” said Tadao Aoki, a senior official at Monju. “The rest you can imagine: Monju is controlling nuclear power with wisdom.”

For partisans of the program, even the unhappy diplomatic fallout over nuclear proliferation and a looming global surplus of uranium and plutonium, as Cold War weapons are dismantled, are insufficient reasons to stop and rethink the plutonium energy strategy.

“We are looking perhaps 30 or 50 or 100 years ahead,” Aoki said. “We now have the problem of plutonium abundance. But that’s just a matter of a few years or 10 years.”

Critics, however, fear that the plutonium lion will prove too wild for human wisdom to tame. For them, Monju is a symbol of technology gone wild, of national pride and bureaucratic inertia leading to danger.

“A reactor like Monju has some possibility to explode like a nuclear bomb, because the density of fissionable material in the core is very high,” said Jinzaburo Takagi, a nuclear chemist who is Japan’s leading campaigner against the program. “Also, because it uses sodium (as a coolant), there is some possibility Monju will experience a sodium explosion.”

Aoki acknowledged that theoretically Monju could explode “if you allow everything to be broken” and “an uncontrollable situation happens.”

But in reality, he asserted, such a disaster is not possible because of the safeguards built into Monju’s design and construction.

Takagi and other critics also say that the more plutonium in the world, the greater the chances that some may be diverted to nuclear weapons. “If plutonium is bred at our plants, Japan will possess a huge stockpile of plutonium, and it will be a proliferation concern to the whole world,” Takagi said.

Other countries, including the United States and France--which has an even more technically advanced breeder reactor called the SuperPhenix--also once shared the dream of virtually endless energy supplies.

The United States dropped its breeder reactor plans in the 1970s, but research continued. In February, in an effort to discourage plutonium use by the world’s nuclear industry, Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary canceled $112 million worth of research into the use of plutonium in nuclear reactors.

“These projects . . . are totally counter to where we want to go in our non-proliferation” efforts, she said.

France’s SuperPhenix was shut down in 1990 because of the danger of fires caused by leakage of liquid sodium. France has decided to restart the plant, but observers generally do not expect Paris to resume wholehearted development of breeder reactors.

This leaves Japan as the only country seriously pursuing a plutonium-based energy policy.

Hit by practical difficulties and international pressure, the Japanese program faces various delays, but both critics and supporters say the commitment of the Japanese government to develop this technology has not wavered.

The Federation of Electric Power Companies decided in January to postpone its plan to start construction of a second, larger breeder reactor by the end of this decade. Difficulty in determining a site and acquiring land were cited as the main reason for the delay. The new target date is 2005.

Delays are nothing new. Monju itself is starting up two years behind schedule because of technical difficulties, but that seems not to have cooled the enthusiasm of its supporters.

“From the point of view of Japanese energy security policy, it’s very important to have . . . the technology to produce electricity from plutonium,” said Yoshikazu Kato, a Science and Technology Agency official. “I don’t think that basic point of view will be influenced by concerns about proliferation or the international situation.”

Japan may, however, take steps to cool the criticism, Kato said.

“We understand that there is international suspicion that Japan might develop nuclear weapons, and Japan cannot just ignore such things,” he explained.

He noted, for example, that while work on Japan’s first plutonium reprocessing plant is continuing, Japanese media have reported that the second plant, originally scheduled for completion in 2010, is now expected to be delayed about 20 years.

Such reprocessing plants can extract plutonium either from spent uranium fuel from regular nuclear power plants, or from the uranium packed around the plutonium core in a breeder reactor.

Without quite confirming the revised plan, which has not been formally announced, Kato noted that because the cost of uranium has not risen as fast as expected, construction of commercial fast-breeder reactors may be delayed. This in turn would delay the need for a second reprocessing plant, he said.

Until Japan completes construction of its large-scale reprocessing plant--a project that is now under way--it will remain dependent on reprocessing plants in France and England. Under long-term contracts, Japan is sending used fuel to those countries for extraction of plutonium.

The first shipment of plutonium back to Japan from France arrived here early last year after an international uproar over the voyage of the Akatsuki Maru and its 1.7-ton cargo. Its 20,000-mile journey around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, past Australia and through the Pacific drew official protests from more than a dozen countries. Critics charged the ship could sink and pollute the ocean, or perhaps be attacked by terrorists seeking material for nuclear weapons.

The world’s reaction prompted new questioning in Japan.

“Is the Akatsuki Maru a treasure ship bearing plentiful energy supplies or a ship of gloom that will push the world into an abyss of nuclear proliferation?” asked an editorial in Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s leading newspapers.

Bands of activists, including local organizations and international groups such as Greenpeace, are mobilizing to protest the start-up of Monju.

Anti-nuclear activists face “a chronic situation of frustration,” said Aileen Mioko Smith, an American born in Japan who heads a group called “Stop the Monju.” Most Japanese, she said, “still sort of believe that without nuclear power the lights will go out.”