Gavan McCormack: Japan as a Nuclear State
[Gavan McCormack is an emeritus professor of Australian National University, a coordinator of Japan Focus, and author of the just published Client State: Japan in the American Embrace. Below is a brief introduction posted especially for Japan Focus. The Japan Focus website includes an excerpt from Professor McCormack's book.]
The nuclear question in relation to Japan is commonly understood in the narrow sense of whether Japan might one day opt to produce its own nuclear weapons, but I argue for a much broader construction. Japan is simultaneously unique nuclear victim country and one of the world’s most nuclear committed countries. Protected and privileged within the American embrace, it has evolved into a nuclear-cycle country and plutonium super-power.
The US nuclear embrace of Japan continues to evolve. Since the chapter was written, the implications of the Bush administration’s decision to promote the worldwide expansion of nuclear power generation and reprocessing, under a global-dominating cartel to be known as “Global Nuclear Energy Partnership” (GNEP), thus reversing thirty years of policy, have become gradually apparent. The US’s willing “follower” states (UK, Japan, Australia) have been uniformly enthusiastic, and the civil nuclear industry seems intent on exploiting the sense of global environmental and energy crisis to promote the nuclear option as green and safe, promising a global nuclear renaissance. Under the GNEP, the world would be divided between “our” states, that will be trusted with weapons (Pakistan, India, Israel, etc) and reprocessing technologies (Japan, and if Australian Prime Minister John Howard can have his way, Australia), and those beyond the pale (at present, most prominently, North Korea and Iran). In the most recent study of the implications, the Oxford Group points out that for a global civil nuclear energy program to have a significant impact, by doubling the nuclear contribution to the global energy grid, bringing it to about one-third of the total, a new reactor would have to be built each week from now to 2075. (Frank Barnaby and James Kemp, “Too Hot to Handle: The Future of Civil Nuclear Power,” Briefing Paper, Oxford Research group, July 2007.
The choice of plutonium as the material on which to rest the global economy threatens both the world’s security and its environment, and the fast breeder technology on which the GNEP would rest has yet to be developed.
On 16 July 2007, following an earthquake that measured 6.8 on the Richter scale, the world’s largest nuclear plant (seven reactors with total generating capacity of 8,000 megawatts), at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Niigata prefecture, had to be shut down indefinitely. Fifty cases of malfunctioning and other “trouble,” including burst pipes, a fire, radioactive leakages into the atmosphere and into the Sea of Japan, and the toppling of hundreds of drums of low-level radioactive wastes, were reported. The plant’s operators (Tokyo Electric Power Company) admitted that the quake had been more than twice as strong as the design had allowed for, and that it had been built directly atop a fault line that they had not detected. Immediate catastrophe was avoided, but 16 July held an ominous message. The government’s guarantees of the safety of existing plants, and its assurances of the reliability of its nuclear-centred energy policy, rang hollow. If the country with the world’s most advanced scientific and engineering skills could make such disastrous nuclear miscalculations, could the rest of the world do better?
Just as the double standards of the existing non-proliferation regime have had the effect of stimulating proliferation, so the “Partnership” threatens the spread of nuclear materials, wastes and technologies, and increases the risk of catastrophe (by accident or terrorist design), while doing little or nothing to address major global problems.
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The nuclear question in relation to Japan is commonly understood in the narrow sense of whether Japan might one day opt to produce its own nuclear weapons, but I argue for a much broader construction. Japan is simultaneously unique nuclear victim country and one of the world’s most nuclear committed countries. Protected and privileged within the American embrace, it has evolved into a nuclear-cycle country and plutonium super-power.
The US nuclear embrace of Japan continues to evolve. Since the chapter was written, the implications of the Bush administration’s decision to promote the worldwide expansion of nuclear power generation and reprocessing, under a global-dominating cartel to be known as “Global Nuclear Energy Partnership” (GNEP), thus reversing thirty years of policy, have become gradually apparent. The US’s willing “follower” states (UK, Japan, Australia) have been uniformly enthusiastic, and the civil nuclear industry seems intent on exploiting the sense of global environmental and energy crisis to promote the nuclear option as green and safe, promising a global nuclear renaissance. Under the GNEP, the world would be divided between “our” states, that will be trusted with weapons (Pakistan, India, Israel, etc) and reprocessing technologies (Japan, and if Australian Prime Minister John Howard can have his way, Australia), and those beyond the pale (at present, most prominently, North Korea and Iran). In the most recent study of the implications, the Oxford Group points out that for a global civil nuclear energy program to have a significant impact, by doubling the nuclear contribution to the global energy grid, bringing it to about one-third of the total, a new reactor would have to be built each week from now to 2075. (Frank Barnaby and James Kemp, “Too Hot to Handle: The Future of Civil Nuclear Power,” Briefing Paper, Oxford Research group, July 2007.
The choice of plutonium as the material on which to rest the global economy threatens both the world’s security and its environment, and the fast breeder technology on which the GNEP would rest has yet to be developed.
On 16 July 2007, following an earthquake that measured 6.8 on the Richter scale, the world’s largest nuclear plant (seven reactors with total generating capacity of 8,000 megawatts), at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Niigata prefecture, had to be shut down indefinitely. Fifty cases of malfunctioning and other “trouble,” including burst pipes, a fire, radioactive leakages into the atmosphere and into the Sea of Japan, and the toppling of hundreds of drums of low-level radioactive wastes, were reported. The plant’s operators (Tokyo Electric Power Company) admitted that the quake had been more than twice as strong as the design had allowed for, and that it had been built directly atop a fault line that they had not detected. Immediate catastrophe was avoided, but 16 July held an ominous message. The government’s guarantees of the safety of existing plants, and its assurances of the reliability of its nuclear-centred energy policy, rang hollow. If the country with the world’s most advanced scientific and engineering skills could make such disastrous nuclear miscalculations, could the rest of the world do better?
Just as the double standards of the existing non-proliferation regime have had the effect of stimulating proliferation, so the “Partnership” threatens the spread of nuclear materials, wastes and technologies, and increases the risk of catastrophe (by accident or terrorist design), while doing little or nothing to address major global problems.
[Click on the SOURCE link aboive to continue reading this article.]