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Japan ships weapons-grade plutonium to U.S., Three Non-Nuclear Principles in focus

Xinhua, March 22, 2016 Adjust font size:

A ship carrying 331 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium left a port in Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan, on Tuesday en route to the United States.

The transportation of the highly pure plutonium, which has been confirmed as enough to make as many as 50 nuclear bombs, follows a bilateral deal struck between Japan and the United States in 2014.

Originally, the plutonium was provided to Japan by Britain, France and the United States in the 1970s and was purportedly to be used for research purposes and was being stored by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency in Tokaimura, in Ibaraki.

Specifically, the United States provided 93 kg, Britain 236 kg and France 2kg. The total amount is enough to create between 40 to 50 atomic bombs, experts have maintained.

Japan agreed to return the plutonium at the request of U.S. President Barack Obama following a nuclear summit held in 2014, at which Obama asserted the United States wanted to more strictly control nuclear materials and prevent the possibility of them falling into the hands of terrorists.

Under maximum security and following an undisclosed route, a British transport ship, called the Pacific Egret, left the port in Tokaimura where the plutonium will be shipped to the Savannah River Site nuclear facility in South Carolina, which is a U.S. government-run plant, where it will be disposed of to prevent its illicit use.

The shipment is the largest amount of plutonium to be moved by sea since 1993, when one ton of plutonium was shipped from France, again headed for Japan, to be used at a nuclear reactor here in Fukui Prefecture, located on Japan's Honshu island, which borders the Sea of Japan.

According to Japan's public broadcaster NHK, Japan currently has 47 tons of plutonium, both in and outside the country, created, apparently, as a by-product of reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear plants.

Japan has stated that it was planning to use its stockpile in a fast-breeder reactor that burns plutonium. However, the reactor is still in developmental stages and will not be online in the near future.

Japan's stockpiles of plutonium have been criticized by the international community as being in violation of its own Three Non-Nuclear Principles in place since the end of WWII, which state that Japan will not possess, produce or introduce nuclear weapons.

The stockpiles of plutonium, technically, contravene all three of its long-standing nuclear policy clauses. Endit