Nuclear security
Plutonium, a key element of nuclear weapons, has been an issue in U.S.-Japan relations for decades. During the administration of Jimmy Carter, the Japanese government pressed Washington for permission to process spent reactor fuel of U.S. origin so that the resulting plutonium could be used for experiments with fast breeder nuclear reactors. The government of Japan wanted to develop a “plutonium economy,” but U.S. government officials worried about the consequences of building plants to reprocess reactor fuel. According to a memo by National Security Council staffer Gerald Oplinger, published for the first time by the National Security Archive, the “projected plants would more than swamp the projected plutonium needs of all the breeder R&D programs in the world.” They “will produce a vast surplus of pure, weapons grade plutonium amounting to several hundred tons by the year 2000.” That stockpile “would constitute a danger in itself” and “it would eventually drive these nations, and those watching their example, into the recycle of plutonium in today's generation of reactors for economic reasons,” which the Carter White House saw as a waste of resources.
Plutonium, a key element of nuclear weapons, has been an issue in U.S.-Japan relations for decades. During the administration of Jimmy Carter, the Japanese government pressed Washington for permission to process spent reactor fuel of U.S. origin so that the resulting plutonium could be used for experiments with fast breeder nuclear reactors. The government of Japan wanted to develop a “plutonium economy,” but U.S. government officials worried about the consequences of building plants to reprocess reactor fuel. According to a memo by National Security Council staffer Gerald Oplinger, published for the first time by the National Security Archive, the “projected plants would more than swamp the projected plutonium needs of all the breeder R&D programs in the world.” They “will produce a vast surplus of pure, weapons grade plutonium amounting to several hundred tons by the year 2000.” That stockpile “would constitute a danger in itself” and “it would eventually drive these nations, and those watching their example, into the recycle of plutonium in today's generation of reactors for economic reasons,” which the Carter White House saw as a waste of resources.
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