On Friday environmental organization Greenpeace released a statement that the Japanese government will load weapons-grade plutonium onto a ship as early as this weekend, destined for the United States, in what would be the largest shipment of the dangerous material since 1992.
The shipment of 730 pounds (331 kg) of plutonium, enough to make over 50 nuclear weapons, is to be loaded in Tokaimura onto an armed British ship, the Pacific Egret, on which it will be transported to the US Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, according to the statement.
Information about plutonium shipments is highly classified because the material is used in nuclear weapons or dirty bombs.
The US embassy in Tokyo declined to comment on or confirm the Greenpeace statement. A spokesperson from the Japanese atomic agency also declined to comment, citing security reasons.
The 730 pound (331 kg) shipment of plutonium comes in response to pressure applied on the Japanese government by anti-nuclear campaigners who have expressed concerns about the country’s nuclear weapons capabilities and its potential to destabilize the region.
Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace, questioned how substantial the material transfer really would be. “Hailing a ship of hundreds of kilograms of plutonium as a triumph for nuclear security while ignoring over 9 tonnes of the weapons material stockpiled in Japan is not just a failure of nuclear non-proliferation, but a dangerous delusion,” said Burnie.
US estimates of Japan’s cumulative stockpile dwarf Burnie’s cautionary assessment. US sources estimate Japan to possess nearly 50 tons of plutonium, the majority of which comes from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel burned in the country’s reactors.
