Global Security Newswire

President Obama last month pressed then-Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan to make a committed effort to advance initiatives aimed at improving the protection and tracking of atomic material, Japanese officials told Kyodo News on Wednesday (see GSN, Sept. 14).

Japan has not moved quickly to pursue cooperative initiatives with the United States on identifying the origins of nuclear material, on determining plutonium concentrations in used atomic fuel and on bolstering protections for nuclear assets in transit, according to Kyodo. Collaboration has been slowed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 20,000 people missing or dead in Japan and set off the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

"I am working hard on the tasks set at the [2010 Global Nuclear Security Summit in Washington], and I urge you to do the same," Obama told Kan in a written communication transmitted on Aug. 22 (see GSN, Sept. 14).

"As two nations with an advanced nuclear infrastructure, we need to take leadership on nuclear security, especially at plutonium and highly enriched uranium processing facilities," Obama said in reference to the bilateral Nuclear Security Working Group.

"We have seen many encouraging steps to improve the security of nuclear materials around the world and to strengthen our individual and collective ability to prevent nuclear smuggling," he said. "At the same time, we are reminded almost daily of the ongoing threat of terrorism and of the necessity to do all we can to avoid the global catastrophe of a terrorist nuclear attack."

At the 2012 Global Nuclear Security Summit planned for Seoul, Washington and Tokyo have "to highlight our progress on nuclear security, and to identify new steps we can take together toward the vision of a more prosperous and peaceful world, one in which nuclear threats are diminished through cooperation and purposeful action," Obama stated.

He urged Tokyo to take thorough advantage of the Integrated Support Center for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Nuclear Security founded late last year at Tokai, Japan. The site offers educational services to personnel working in fledgling atomic sectors in developing nations.

U.S. officials said Obama had delivered comparable messages to other governments (Kyodo News I/Mainichi Daily News, Sept. 15).

Meanwhile, an assessment by 16 U.N. agencies published on Wednesday asserts Japan was "too modest" in assessing potential problems at the Fukushima facilities prior to the March events. Radiation releases on a level not seen since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster forced the evacuation of about 80,000 residents from a 12-mile ring exclusion zone surrounding the site.

"The principal lesson of the Fukushima accident is that assumptions made concerning which types of accident were possible or likely were too modest," the document states. "Those assumptions should be reviewed for all existing and planned reactors, and the possible effects of climate change should be taken into account."

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which helped to prepare the report, should "establish a global radiation monitoring platform to display real-time data on radioactive releases and integrate data from international and national monitoring and early warning systems," and the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization should "provide its expertise and radionuclide data for that purpose," the document states.

Either error or deliberate interference could produce comparable problems "through the loss of power, communications, computer, safety and physical protection systems, and the loss of key operating, safety and security personnel," the report warns.

The assessment also stresses the need for "coordinated support to national, regional and international food and agriculture response planning to nuclear emergency."

"Contaminated areas may not be able to grow crops or support livestock grazing as a result of the persistence of radionuclides such as cesium 137 for decades," the U.N. agencies said (Kyodo News II/Mainichi Daily News, Sept. 15).

Elsewhere, a study on Thursday indicated that radioactive material would need to be removed from more than 1,200 square miles of land in Japan's Fukushima prefecture (Kyodo News III/Mainichi Daily News, Sept. 15).

The Fukushima plant's operator on Wednesday indicated it had altered its temperature mitigation procedure for the site's No. 2 reactor (Kyodo News IV/Mainichi Daily News, Sept. 15).