Speach At The United Nations
May 4th, 2005
Atsuko Nogawa
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| Speach At The United Nations May 4th, 2005 Atsuko Nogawa |
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Hello my name is Atsuko Nogawa.
I didn't do very much of the walking when they were walking...I was doing more of the organizing and the logistical part in Japan, so I missed majority of the walk. However, in preparation I have learnt a lot about the nuclear fuel cycle and how it's so inclusive of all people, without any discrimination - it affects everyone in their daily lives. I want to thank Johnella for allowing us to be here. Unfortunately this was the chosen place for the political discussion. Hopefully it works out that we can achieve a nuclear free future sometime in the near future. I am here representing Greenpeace Japan and Greenpeace Japan is recently working on Japans' first commercial scale plutonium plant that's about start operating in 2007. At the moment the plant is under a testing phase called Uranium Testing. It's using the depleted uranium to see how and if the function is working. Since they started in December last year it had about 150 cubic meters of toxic acid that came out of the plant. The plant was ceased for a couple of days because they found a design failure. Basically this plant is just a disaster itself. Not only that, when it fully functions it creates enough plutonium to make about 1000 of the bombs that destroyed Nagasaki on 9th August 1945. So, considering this is the 60th anniversary since the biggest massacre by the nuclear weapons in one day, it is just unbelievable. When I learnt about Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant I couldn't believe Japan is going ahead with this. Besides creating 8,000 kilograms of plutonium every year, Japan already has about 40 tons of plutonium in Europe, and Japan already existing and we don't have any plans to use this plutonium. This was supposed to be the "peaceful use" of plutonium. Just because Japan is so limited in resources they wanted to use this 1% of the plutonium from the spent nuclear fuel from the nuclear power plant. However, in order to do that they have to cut this spent nuclear fuel releasing all these different kinds - about 40 different kinds of nuclear radiations - into the air, into the ocean, over the next 40 years for the first plant and then they are already planning for the second plant!! Not only releasing the radiation, they are creating very toxic high level waste including the acid, which has traces of americium, strontium, cesium and plutonium - all this very fatal and very toxic nuclear material in it and they don't have any plans of where to dispose it. But they are still going through with the plans at the moment. I want to show you a slide that will explain it a little better. Australia has only one plant and they are struggling to find a place for the waste. SHOWING A SLIDE of JAPAN - That's a map of the nuclear facilities in Japan. Japan has 53 commercial nuclear reactors currently operating. I see now that Japan has suffered already 3 times since last winter by major earthquakes, not just a little one, but major earthquakes. These plants are sitting right on top of these faults, and it's just crazy. But I am not going too far into the nuclear industry today, I want to talk a bit more about waste management. Atsuko pointing to the slide talks about nuclear fuel cycle: This is what the government calls the nuclear fuel cycle. How you can see on top is the uranium mine, that is the beginning of the nuclear fuel cycle, and then that gets converted into a gas form and then gets enriched to have the content of fission material within the whole component of uranium rich enough to burn at the nuclear power plant. After its been burnt it gets taken out and then being stored in a pool for a couple of years when its cooled enough to be transported and now Japan is transporting part of the waste to the reprocessing plant which is located in the northern part of Japan. It is in a very remote village with a population of only 12,000 people and they have always lived from the ocean - fishing and also farming. It's a very beautiful, beautiful country but there is the reprocessing plant, which produces plutonium, there is the uranium enrichment plant which enriches uranium and could be used to make enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb. Japan it's a very unanswerable question at the moment - a political decision. But the facility is the same - technically it's the same. We have those two plants and two huge storage plants, about sorry I don't know in my head at the moment the number in square kilometers - but it stores about 2,800 canisters of the high level liquid waste - vitrified waste. If you stood in one canister for 30 seconds it would be very fatal. You cannot go anywhere close. It's controlled remotely by the rubber!! So, human beings cannot even go near one canister - and we have 2,800 scheduled to be stored in this Rokkasho Mura Nuclear Fuel Facility. More slides....... At the moment as I said the plant is scheduled to be opening in 2 years. That's the sum of the facilities in Rokkasho. These facilities are very close. There is a port over there where the spent nuclear fuel comes in and then it gets transported by a truck to the reprocessing plant and filled the pool there. That's a picture of the plant about 3 years ago when it was being constructed. Relating to the NPT, since the last NPT review conference, the situation of the world has changed a lot. There have been major events socially. One is the twin towers - the 9/11 incident. Since then the whole political situation in the world is very unstable and there are many threats within the world Reflecting that situation many of the political leaders, such as Dr. Mohamed El Baradei from IAEA Director General and also Kofi Annan The Secretary General of the United Nations, they within the report, talk about restricting the technology that make bombs and weapons useable material - which is the enrichment and reprocessing. Japan's Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant is not operating yet, but it's under the testing phase. When it starts operating this is the first commercial scale plant in the northern nuclear weapons state and so it sets a bad for the rest of the world. And if this is not the proliferation of the nuclear technology - what else is?? So we are trying to talk to as many people while we are here, to let them know under the non-proliferation effort this is a crucial time we are facing because we only have 6 months before they start producing plutonium at this plant. Also, environmentally its just pollutes, when it operates the amount of radiation that releases is just unbelievable. The daily radiation discharge from Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant is an equivalent to the annual radiation discharge from a nuclear power plant. It's a daily radiation contamination that is going to happen. The local people in Aomori are just, in a way discouraged because the plant has come this far, but they are determined to fight until the plant is stopped. So, in a way I am representing them because they can't all be here, some of them are here and are speaking at different events, but we need to raise this awareness about the plant, and that the government is pushing ahead. I have a little brochure here about the connection with the proliferation and the 60th anniversary of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and also about the waste that will be produced from the plant and also a fact sheet on Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant. Thank You |
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