Are We Nuclear Proliferators?

It is unusual for a power generation company to sell uranium. Several newspapers reported on Thursday that the Japan Atomic Power Company (JAPC) had sold its stock of uranium for nuclear power generation. Although the company made no comment on the fact and purpose of the selling, reports supposed that it was necessary to maintain the balance of budget of the company, which suffered from the suspension policy of nuclear reactors until safety would be assured. By the way, where the uranium came from and go to is unclear. The concern of nuclear proliferation, whish has been argued after the accident of the First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, is coming true.

It is unclear which stage the sold uranium was on. As is often discussed, uranium processing for power generation takes four steps, mining, milling into yellow cake, enriching, and fabrication as fuel. JAPC did not mention which stage the sold uranium was on. It also unknown where the uranium was sold to. Nuclear power companies in Japan import uranium from the dealers in Canada or Australia. The reports suppose that it is possible to have sold the uranium back to those exporters.

JAPC has three reactors in Japan. Among those, the second reactor of Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant can be going to be shut down, because an active fault was found right under the facility. The regulation rule of Japan does not allow to build nuclear plant on an active fault. Other two reactors’ operations were suspended wanting to safety assurance. As a company totally dependent on nuclear power generation, JAPC lost its main source of income. Selling uranium is an attempt to survive the crisis for nuclear power companies after the Fukushima accident.

World trend dealing with nuclear materials, however, is going toward reducing the total quantity. In the discussion of Iranian nuclear development, who provides the resource is a big problem. Although non-proliferation network has been build among developed countries, North Korea has been accumulating plutonium and uranium from somewhere, and keeps on operating nuclear weapons test. Even though it may have not been weapon-grade highly enriched uranium, Japan can be embarrassingly dubbed as a nuclear proliferator.

The international uranium market is too complicated to determine which uranium is going to where. In Japan, the Tokyo Electronic Power Company, which owns broken nuclear plant in Fukushima and owes huge debt for compensation to displaced people in the region, is supposed to going to sell its uranium. As a matter of fact, the discussion on bankruptcy of power companies is inevitable. But the politics is highly reluctant to talk about it. It must be the time to seek an option to start bankruptcy proceedings for some companies, and maintain energy supply regardless those economically irrelevant companies.