Japan’s Nuclear Mistake
This year has seen a lot of concern about the confrontation between China and Japan over a group of islets in the East China Sea.
Less attention, though, is being paid to what may be a more destabilizing development: next year Japan plans to bring its long-delayed Rokkasho reprocessing plant online, which could extract as much as eight tons of weapons-usable plutonium from spent reactor fuel a year, enough for nearly 1,000 warheads. That would add to Japan’s existing stockpile of 44 tons, 9 of which are stored in domestic facilities.
Japan has repeatedly vowed never to develop nuclear weapons, and there’s no reason to doubt that now.… Seguir leyendo »