Antinuclear

Nuclear reprocessing’s danger in hastening the arms race

The most dangerous result of Sellafield’s reprocessing industry is the arms race it may cause on the other side of the world. 

United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium, DC Bureau By Joseph Trento, on April 9th, 2012“…….Besides Japan, only France, Russia and Great Britain still regard plutonium as an asset. These countries have invested tens of billions of dollars in their commercial reprocessing industry. The United States abandoned its only reprocessing facility in Barnwell, S.C., just outside the gates of the Savannah River Site without ever operating the facility.

Only huge government-owned plants in La Hague, France, and Sellafield, England, separate tons of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel for foreign customers. The biggest of these customers is Japan, which, despite its confidence in its ability to build a breeder reactor, had turned to purchasing plutonium from the British and French.

The plutonium that the French and British reprocessors return to Japan is pure enough to use in nuclear weapons, and some of it comes from uranium mined in the United States. Thanks to the U.S.-Japan Agreement pushed through by the Reagan administration’s Richard Kennedy, the United States no longer has any influence over the transport and use of this material. So even after Japan’s disastrous nuclear accidents, and despite efforts to limit nuclear weapons and prevent terrorist groups from obtaining nuclear material, U.S.-origin nuclear material is still being shipped to Japan by the ton. Every shipload contains enough plutonium for hundreds of bombs…….
The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing facility is the British government-owned version of the Savannah River Site……. Sellafield produced plutonium by the ton, as well as even greater quantities of other radioactive wastes. Like Savannah River, the British plant spread radiation into the surrounding environment. Since 1952, fish, shellfish, and sea plants in the Irish Sea, and even the local pigeons, have been heavily contaminated with radioactive waste from Sellafield. The plutonium plant released into the sea 30 billion liters of radioactive waste in a single decade.

The most dangerous result of Sellafield’s reprocessing industry is the arms race it may cause on the other side of the world. That is because British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL), the government-owned corporation that runs Sellafield, churns out plutonium for the highest bidder. Dr. Frank Barnaby, a retired British nuclear weapons designer, says that the plutonium fuel produced at Sellafield that was repeatedly shipped to Japan was sufficiently pure to be used in nuclear weapons. He explains that both the United States and Great Britain have both built and tested nuclear weapons made with the so-called reactor grade plutonium.

The late Paul Leavanthal, a non-proliferation expert, said the people of Seascale, the town nearest Sellafield, unwittingly supplied plutonium that could have ended up in nuclear bombs, and charged that “the Thatcher British government did it in the name of British jobs.”…..  http://www.dcbureau.org/201204097128/national-security-news-service/united-states-circumvented-laws-to-help-japan-accumulate-tons-of-plutonium.html

August 9, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized