A shocking report by Joseph Trento in the National Security News Service outlines the actions of the US in allowing Japan access to some of its most secret nuclear weapons facility to transfer tens of billions of dollars worth nuclear research to Japan in the 80s breaking several nuclear non-proliferation treaties intended to prevent exactly such transfers.
While the US had been aware of Japan’s nuclear programme since the 1960s, this development has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium. To get an idea of how much that is? It is more than the sum of the capacity of China, India and Pakistan together.
The report is definitely worth a read and the documents provided testify to the authenticity of information, however, it is important to realize that Japan’s reprocessing of fuel or getting the tech for it from US is not exactly a secret.
More posts to follow.
The original report may be found here. It is accompanied by documents that back up its facts referenced. However, a word of caution. The interpretation of the report may be alarmist.
NOTE:
Another thing to note is that while the report seems to say that the US gave Japan billions of dollars of research, it conflates plutonium reprocessing with giving Japan n-weapons information, a term usually used to refer to weapon design information. This report makes it clear as well that this only means having plutonium to fuel the bombs, but there is no indication of any actual nuclear weapons systems. The report should mainly be seen as the process of transfer of information in violation of non-proliferation pacts rather than fears of a bomb.