 I think we met before you came to Korea, right? Yeah. Is it in Japan? Oh, no, actually, in your building. Oh, right, OK, sure. Are we? It's about the good, kind of faster protection sign, sometimes. You think they're lying? You're excited, aren't you? Japan analysts. Yeah, good evening. Good morning and welcome. Corral, my panelists, over here. Yeah, I see you. What's the matter where I sit? Just one second, Bobby. So good morning, I'm Sharon Squasoni. I direct the proliferation prevention program here at CSIS. Welcome. So glad everyone could make it here on this very cold morning. I would like to make a few administrative comments before we jump into the substance. And that is, please turn your cell phone ringers off. We are webcasting this at the same time. And this is on the record. So it is my great pleasure and privilege to welcome you here today to our event on the nonproliferation implications of Japan's fuel cycle decisions. I know that's a mouthful. It's a complicated topic. But we have been involved for the past, I don't know, year and a half or so, CSIS, the Proliferation Prevention Program, and Hitatsubashi University, Dr. Nobu Akiyama, on this project that sought to bring together Japanese and US experts to discuss how Japan is making its fuel cycle decisions and what that means for the nonproliferation regime. Before I jump into my slides, which I'm not sure, Bobby, I know how to get to, they'll take a look at that. Fantastic, thank you. I would like to introduce our speakers. So immediately to my left, Emma Chandler-Avery, who's a specialist in Asian Affairs at the Congressional Research Service. And Emma has also held positions in the State Department, policy planning, and on the Korea desk. And Emma and I have worked together, I'm happy to say, at the Congressional Research Service. Following Emma will have Dr. Nobu Masa Akiyama, who is a professor at the School of International and Public Policy at Hitatsubashi University. Nobu is also an adjunct research fellow for the Center for Promotion of Disarmament and Nonproliferation at the Japan Institute of International Affairs. Nobu has also had his finger on the pulse of all of these issues related to Japan's nuclear energy and nonproliferation for many years and has served as an expert on a lot of panels. We don't have them listed here in your bio. But I guess the Fukushima Commission was one of the most notable ones. And then following, Nobu will hear from Dr. Steve Fedder, who is a professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. And Steve is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, fellow of the American Physical Society. And most recently in the US government, he was the assistant director at large in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House. So Steve has seen all of these issues from the inside and the outside. I am just going to briefly walk you through what we're going to do today. I'm going to talk a little bit about the genesis of this project. And then we're going to move through what's happening in Japan. I'm going to throw a few slides up there on the technical issues and what's happening in the fuel cycle. And then we're going to hear from Emma on the domestic political and economic context in Japan right now. Then we'll move to Nobu, who will talk about the Tokyo workshop. Steve will make his presentation. And then we'll have a general discussion and then open it up to you all. So as you know, I mean, I see a lot of expert faces in this audience. Japan, which had 54 operating nuclear power reactors before the accident of Fukushima, all of them stopped subsequently. And now we're looking at a situation where only a couple permission has been given for the two reactors, the Sendai 1 and 2 reactors, to restart both the NRA permission and the local government permission just recently. On the enrichment side, Japan has been moving over to new centrifuges at the Rikasha plant. And that's moving ahead, scheduled for, actually, I think that says 2016. It should be 2017. Sorry, typo in there. And then the biggest question is the Rikasha reprocessing at restart. Initially, that was, or more recently, it was scheduled to start up in March 2016, following all the completion of the safety inspections. And now that has been, sorry, that was going to be start up in 2014. Now it's been pushed to 2016. And then, lastly, on the fast reactor program in the basic energy plan, the Manjoo fast reactor is now sort of been designated for research and development. Whoops. This is very sensitive here. OK, there we go. So this is just a diagram of the nuclear power plant. Sorry, a little bit of my scribbling is on there. There are a lot of complicated, I'm sure most of you have access to that, a lot more complicated information about which ones will be restarting when and which ones have applied for permission to restart. There's a lot of information up on our website, and there's a background, actually a policy perspective that we left out in the front, and then a background discussion paper available on our website. I don't want to bore you to death with all of that. I just wanted to put a little bit of information up there. This is the status of the review of compliance with the new regulatory requirements. One of the big issues we're going to talk about is when these reactors restart, and I think some of them will, which of them will be fueled with mixed oxide fuel because that has a definite impact on Japan's plutonium stockpiles. So you can see in Kyushu Utilities, and I wanted to get local permission to restart on November 7. This is at the end of September, the Japan Atomic Energy Commission released the plutonium management status in Japan. This is some slides that JNFL shared with me recently. Plutonium, there's been some discussion. Why did the plutonium go up? There's some reasons for that. But basically, the bottom line is there's 10 tons in Japan and 36 tons outside in the UK and France that's been separated. Just briefly, the Tokyo workshop, our aim was to bring together experts to explore alternative paths for Japan's fuel cycle. So we had half Japanese experts, half US experts, some from industry, some government, former government, and some non-proliferation experts. And really the aim was to say, OK, these decisions are quite complicated. How can we make each other, both sides, understand each other a little more? And we broke down into different groups that explored different alternative strategies. We have, I'm wondering if this link will work. Let's see. Just to show you on our website, it's working. Slowly. OK. We have a variety of products, including a series of interviews that both Nobu and I did. Nobu's are in Japanese, mine are in English. And the Japanese ones have English subtitles. What? I'm going to wait for the program to respond. I think it's going to work. OK. Well, if you go to our CSIS website on the Proliferation Prevention page and go to this set of topics, post-Fukushima, you'll be able to access the interviews. So we did a series of, so we had discussion papers that everybody completed. And this workshop report, which is what you found outside. And then these interviews with individual experts. So you'll get the full range of views from people who are straight from industry or from the non-proliferation area. Let's see. Some of the questions we considered, what were the drivers of spend fuel management and fuel cycle decisions? What were some of the Japanese public perceptions? Japanese public is overwhelmingly concerned with safety, not non-proliferation. You could probably say the same of US, of the US public. We considered the disconnect between the perceptions of what was desirable versus what would actually happen. So I asked each of the experts to say, OK, you tell me, what's the best outcome for Japan's nuclear fuel cycle from your perspective? And what do you think is really going to happen? And we also talked about the issue of latent nuclear weapons capability and then actions that Japan could take to improve transparency. So I'm going to step aside here and let all of my experts speak. And we'll start with Emma Chandler-Avery, first on some of the domestic considerations. Good morning, everyone. Before I start, I have to issue a quick disclaimer that nothing that I say here represents CRS and certainly not the US Congress. I'm going to be, I think, fairly brief. I just want to give a basic political scene setter for what's going on in Japan right now and just a few of my observations about how the nuclear power issue plays in Japanese politics. I have to say, we're looking at a significant change from just a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, I think that Abe was seen as very firmly in control and well-positioned to pursue a pretty ambitious agenda that he laid out. And just within the week, we have seen the Japanese economy fall into recession. The LDP-backed candidate in Okinawa lost in a gubernatorial election. And SNAP elections have been called by Abe. I think there are very sound political reasons to call this election right now. And most of the observers think that the LDP coalition will remain in control and probably extend the length of its rule. However, coming out of this, I think there is also strong potential for Abe to be in a somewhat weakened political position, which is going to bring up some challenges in terms of tackling his agenda. Right now, the biggest challenges that I see are, of course, first and foremost dealing with what's a foundering economy, pursuing a negotiations and an agreement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is particularly important to the US as well, and trying to establish some of the structural reforms that he's promised as part of the abinomic strategy. He's also going to need, I think, extra political capital to deal with pushing forward the realignment of US military troops in Okinawa, and particularly the relocation of a controversial Futenma air station there. And then, of course, the topic of today, restarting the 48 nuclear reactors that have been idled in Japan. With limited political capital, he's going to have to prioritize a bit among all of these issues. We've already seen him lose what was expected to be sort of his chief spokesperson for restarting nuclear reactors with the loss of Yuko Buchi from his cabinet, who resigned just a few weeks ago. And she was seen as being a really strong potential advocate for this, having a good public-based young telegenic mother of young children was seen as possibly being a force to try and sway a skeptical public on restarting these reactors. So far in the restart, I think there is a strong sense among observers that the government has largely left these jobs to, first of all, the nuclear regulation agency, as well as local government officials to try and make the case to their publics. And there may be a sense that there's a need for more national-level advocacy if you're going to convince the Japanese public of this need. In terms of, I want to make a couple of comments on the nature of how this topic plays in Japanese politics, because it's actually it's somewhat slippery and a bit hard to quantify and very hard to predict in Japanese politics. On the one hand, the issue of nuclear power is deep and underlying and very emotional among the Japanese public, particularly post-Fukushima. They're brought out the largest public demonstration since the Vietnam War era in opposition to nuclear power. There's also been very powerful figures who have emerged in opposition to restarting reactors, including former Prime Minister Koizumi, who basically came out of retirement when you've been very quiet to support Japan going to zero. There are at least three other former prime ministers who also came out with a similar position. On the other hand, despite this very powerful public current, the LDP, who have been seen as relatively pro-nuclear, have maintained this stance and been elected by pretty wide margins in the past two elections, December 2012 and July 2013. In the July 2013 upper house elections, actually, the LDP won every constituency that had a nuclear plant within its boundaries. And consumers are, it seems, paying the price here, literally paying the price with rising energy costs, yet it doesn't seem to have really swayed poll numbers. There's other topics that seem to be more on the minds of voters when they go into the polling booths. The government throughout this time have maintained this commitment to restarting reactors. However, the national energy plan that was released this past spring didn't set actual targets, didn't define the energy portfolio percentages as a goal. In terms of coalition politics within Japan, I think that Nobu can probably speak to this with more expertise, but it seems that Komeito has sort of a moderately less pro-nuclear stance, at least according to their party platform. But at this point, they seem to be taking the path of least political resistance and had made a big issue of it so far. This is all probably news to you who are not news to you, people who are more experts in this field, but it's very interesting in Japan. I think how it's not quite a NIMBY issue there. I mean, with some important exceptions, local communities, because of federal subsidies, support the restart. But I think it's beyond five kilometers around a reactor. There's the more public opposition looking at, basically, roughly 60% of the public are opposed to the restart of these plants. Because there seems to be sort of a gentleman's agreement that mayors and governors have an unofficial veto, it's a really complicated patchwork of different political interests at play when you're looking at restarting at specific facilities. I think that the situation is now somewhat tenuous in terms of restarting these reactors. There's, of course, a strong need for Abe to reduce the trade deficits because of these very high costs of imports of fossil fuels to make up the difference here. And I think there's also politically the risk of this being a real sleeper issue and something that will sway the public in larger numbers just to support alternatives to the LDP. And that, of course, is particularly so if there is some other accident. That you could really see a dramatic turn if we see even something that's not up to the severity of what happened on 311. I'm going to stop there, but thank you very much for your attention. OK, I think we'll take questions at the end. So I'd like to invite Nobu up to the podium, whichever you'd like. I need to show the slide. Also, I need to see the slides. OK, so I think that might work better. Please. So Sharon, thank you very much for organizing this panel. And I really enjoyed working with Sharon on this project. Although I think many people have trouble in pronouncing my university's name as well as my own name, Hitotsubashi. So I hope that this is something take away for you the Hitotsubashi, please remember my university, actually. So my talk is some outcome from our workshop in Tokyo. And also my take on perception gap between the Japanese and American participants on the factors which may decide the future or fate of a Japanese nuclear fuel cycle policy. So to continue or not to continue, that's a problem for our fuel cycle policy. And I think I'm going to skip the most of them because Sharon has already talked about. But it's a current status. And I'd like to just start upon the basic energy plan. And then this identifies nuclear energy as a kind of baseload energy source. And the government made clear its position to restart the nuclear power plants. But in reality, the pace of the revelation on the safety requirements is rather slow with only limited capabilities of a nuclear regulatory agency. And then hopefully, the government was not so pushing hard saying that the revelation of safety standard must be independent from the decision of the restart or not. And then the government is not really taking a position on this safety standard. So with only limited capacity of a regulatory agency, I think the pace for the restart is now pretty much delayed. And so that's what Sharon said earlier about this. And then on the fuel cycle policy, currently, as Sharon said, the low-casual reprocessing plant is delayed. The company announced a 20-second announcement of a delay in the operation. And then it says they will complete the construction in March of 2016. Then they have to have another double check on their safety requirements. So it takes several months more after the completion of construction. And then they have invested approximately $20 billion US dollars in this plant. So it is something too big to lose for the industry, in fact. And then, of course, the plutonium stockpile is a big concern for the international audience, and in particular, from the perspective of nuclear proliferation or security concerns. Then further problem probably is that the prospects for the first media reactor research project, Monju, has relatively uncertain and clear future what would happen with this Monju. And if we see this nuclear fuel cycle paradigm and technology paradigm, then completion of a closed fuel cycle is the goal. But at this moment, I think the Japanese program must reconcile with the MOOCs fuel cycle at this moment. Then we have in the workshop discussed on the variables that will affect Japan's plutonium balance. So maybe this slide we focus on the issue of the technical aspect. How many and when light water reactors will restart? And amount of reserve capacity in the spent fuel pool. So in fact, the spent fuel pool capacity on site of each reactor is getting full. And I think approximately 70% of the capacity are now full. So if we have seen the restart of nuclear power plants without appropriate treatment of removal of spent fuel into the other locations, so that maybe the utilities will face a challenge of how to deal with the spent fuels. Then additionally, so how many light water reactors will use MOOCs? In order to reduce the plutonium stockpile, then we have to use the MOOCs fuel in the reactors. So the question is, how many light water reactors which could use the MOOCs will be restarted. And there is a prospect that the two reactors in OMA, which use one ton of MOOCs every year, would be restarted sometime, several years time. And if that happens, then the Japanese nuclear community expects that the other stockpile plutonium be reduced. But probably what we have to also discuss and think more seriously is about political and international context in which our nuclear fuel cycle programs are located. This is my view on how difficult it is to solve this plutonium disposal program. I would characterize this dilemma. So on one hand, there is a particular international pressure on the meeting, the non-pluriflation requirements. But then on the other hand, at home, there is a pressure, demand for the nuclear power from the viewpoint of the economic recovery. So there is a strong interest for the restart of nuclear power. But on the other hand, because of the question of this position of spent fuel, the problem of delay in the operation of low-casual reprocessing may cause some concern. So this is three interlocking factors which currently exist in the Japanese fuel cycle program. And on top of that, actually Japanese Atomic Energy Commission set a guideline for how to hunt the plutonium. In August 2003, it says, utilities are expected to submit the plutonium usage plan annually before separation of plutonium. So that means if there is no prospect for the restart in a relatively large scale light-water reactors, then the separation of plutonium through the reprocessing may not be the following, the guideline set by the Atomic Energy Commission. So overall, the factors which would affect the decision over low-casual are probably divided into these six elements. And the size of the cycle actually shows the importance of gravity of the issues in my analysis. So the local community interest that is our local economy low-casual is so much embedded to the existence of this reprocessing and other facilities. And we had a election for the mayor of low-casual village in June, and then actually the candidates which support low-casual one with a big margin, I think 5,000 to 150. So the local community is overwhelmingly support the low-casual. Then from a national perspective, I think energy security and science and technology interests there. Since the mid-70s, Japan has been seeking for a sort of a semi-ingenious energy sources that is a nuclear fuel cycle. And that still persists. Secondly, that's why there is a kind of a logic of JMOX plus running stock of plutonium which is necessary for keeping this JMOX program. And there is a kind of rationale which was claimed by the Japanese nuclear community that the separation plutonium must be started before the JMOX publication plan will be operated. Then the economy, that is probably controversial to some extent. So people are arguing about the cost of the nuclear energy. And according to the official estimate, that is not so high in comparison with the other sources, such as natural energy or wind power or solar power. But some other private estimates shows the cost of the nuclear power is higher than these energy sources. So there are some controversies over that. But at the same time, there is a fact that Japanese utility companies have invested a huge amount of money on this fuel cycle program. So if they stop the operation of this, it's going to be a huge sum cost of waste of money. So they have some sort of a sense that they should utilize it. And then the public opinion, that is in general very cautious about nuclear energy and much more cautious on the plutonium question. According to some surveys, the modern majority of the public are rather cautious about the restart of nuclear power plants and more cautious about the location. Non-pluriphalation, that is relatively smaller concern that Sharon explained. Although plutonium balance attracts much attention among the nuclear communities. But I think Japanese public are less aware of that. And then, but at the same time, the foreign policy establishments are interested in the maintenance of the Japanese influence in nuclear non-pluriphalation regime. And then also Japanese companies, like Toshiba Hitachi, producing nuclear related machines, are interested in maintaining the influence in market. So that must be pursued with the non-pluriphalation interest. So that is the non-pluriphalation occupies certain position in the overall framework addressing the local question. But that's consideration relatively small in my view. And then the political factors, you know, one of the urgent issues that Japanese nuclear communities are interested in is the renewal of bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States, which is up to 2018. And they are curious, you know, how the status of location would affect either positively or negatively on the renewal of nuclear cooperation agreement. Oh, and then about retaining the latent nuclear capability, nuclear upon capability. I guess in my observation, that part is relatively small. You know, occasionally our politicians touch upon the issues of technological deterrence. Yeah, right. I know one of the permanent politicians mentioned that we should maintain technological deterrence. That is to say the latent nuclear capability. But that, I don't think that becomes the mainstream discussion in Japanese community. So please remember the size of circles. That's Japan's perspective. And this is, I think, what I see as an American perspective. You know, non-pluriphalation occupies really a big part of this framework. I think I should ask Dr. Feta to correct me if I'm wrong, but this is kind of overwhelmingly the interest of Japan's plutonium question. So, but on the part of economy, I think economic rationale is one of the also important issues that is raised by the American experts. So if our fuel cycle program is not economically rational enough, then it is natural for us to give up the nuclear fuel cycle. But on the other hand, maybe Japanese experts claim, you know, the economy does not matter so much in front of the urgent needs for the energy security. So it's a kind of, you know, not a conflict, but the difference in views and priorities between economy and the nuclear energy security. And then non-pluriphalation. I think many of you are concerned about Japan's nuclear option. And also if Japan is allowed to pursue the nuclear fuel cycle, what will be the impact on the overall non-pluriphalation regime? And finally, I think the consideration is about the overall US-Japan relationship, in particular the impact on the alliance, and also once again, the renewal of the nuclear cooperation agreement. So then we have discussed three options about our low-casual policy. One is business as usual. So that's what the Japanese government is trying to pursue. Start low-casual with some prerequisite. So we talked about what are the necessary conditions to be accepted for the optional business as usual, accepted. So first of all, I think they have to restart the right-water reactors, which could use mocks. And then plutonium stockpile must remain at the appropriate and acceptable level. The thirdly, effective measure for solving the interim storage question. For example, the seeking and the dry-cast storage. At this moment, this option is not really accepted under the agreement between local community and utilities. So that must be something which we have to take into account. The second option is principled restraints. So that is more cautious approach to the start of low-casual. And then finally, the repurposing low-casual. Although, you know, maybe Japan could start low-casual, but purpose is not just simply only for the separation of plutonium for the domestic purposes, but what about putting this into international services? Then there are some sort of limitations. First of all, capabilities, the capacity of reprocessing, and also the cost. Cost factor is important. Who will be the customers for such expensive services? Then, you know, of course they, you know, can Korean join the Japanese-led program, and then what about the public acceptance of local community? Then finally, you know, in general, we think that there's some keys, key factors for the policy decisions. But foremost, important is transparency and accountability to which we assure international community. And also for domestic audience, I think more important is economic rationality and local interest. So they are actually contradicting each other. In particular, because there is a strong urgency from the local community for the start in low-casual, operating nuclear power plants in general, because they are highly dependent on the, you know, nuclear facilities. So, you know, I think it is difficult puzzle for our government to solve. But at least, you know, I think Japanese government and the utilities could do more about increasing transparency of its program and the plausibility of this plan, which is suggested by the Japanese government, and then make more commitment to the non-proliferation and explain how to minimize the proliferation risk of the program. So thank you very much. Thank you, Nobu. I love your circles when they go back to that. Steve, the floor is yours. Okay, well, I will also focus on the reprocessing program because I think it has much larger implications for the future of the non-proliferation regime than Japan's enrichment program. As all of you know, enrichment is absolutely necessary to produce low-enriched uranium for most of the world's reactors, all the reactors in Japan, all the reactors in the United States. There's a powerful economic rationale for Japan to have enrichment. There is no rationale for reprocessing, no economic or technical rationale. And enrichment produces low-enriched uranium LEU, which cannot be used in a nuclear weapon, and reprocessing produces plutonium that can be used directly in a nuclear weapon and poses unique risks of theft and terrorism. And you've seen the stockpiles, the 11 tons of separated plutonium in Japan, the 36 tons of separated plutonium in Japanese, separated plutonium in Europe. I think it's also useful to state those in different terms. The 11 tons in plutonium is enough for about, the 11 tons of plutonium in Japan is enough for about 2,000 nuclear weapons. The 36 tons in Europe is enough for another five to 6,000 nuclear weapons. The Rikasho plant, when operating at full capacity, would produce eight tons a year of plutonium, which is enough for over 1,000 nuclear weapons a year. So these stockpiles are large and greatly in excess of civilian needs. And that was true even before Fukushima, but it's certainly even more true, even more obvious today. And in the wake of the accident, there's no realistic plan for Japan to use the output, the full output of Rikasho. So if Rikasho operates, particularly if it operates at full capacity, the stockpile of plutonium is almost certain to grow. And those stockpiles generate three kinds of concerns, I think. The first is that neighboring countries, countries just tend to make worst case assumptions about other countries. And they can see growing Japanese plutonium stockpile, particularly one with no identified near term use as a latent nuclear weapon capability. In fact, I've attended several meetings in other countries in East Asia where this concern is cited quite explicitly. And to the extent that other countries take this seriously, that can contribute to instability and hedging on behalf of other countries. Second, and I think more important is that Japan's reprocessing program sets a precedent and unfortunate precedent for other countries. That Japan is the only non-nuclear weapon state or the only state without nuclear weapons that produces separated plutonium. And if Japan claims that plutonium separation is a vital part of its civilian nuclear power program, then that makes it difficult to persuade other countries that they do not need the same technology. And double standards can exist for a time, but they can't exist forever. And other countries like South Korea legitimately question why they shouldn't be permitted something to do, to do something that Japan is permitted to do. And South Korea's desire to revise its agreement for cooperation with the United States to permit reprocessing, they would call it reprocessing, but it's reprocessing, is an example of how Japan's nuclear fuel cycle activities undermine nonproliferation norms. Like Japan, South Korea argues that reprocessing provides important waste management benefits. And if South Korea began reprocessing and stockpiling plutonium, it's easy to see how other countries would portray that as a security threat. And Japan claims that reprocessing is essential. Any country was spent fuel. Any country, that means with a nuclear reactor, can say that they too need reprocessing to manage their nuclear waste. That reprocessing is one of their inalienable rights under the NBT. So if Japan continues reprocessing without any economic rationale, or any firm plans for the plutonium that's produced, this will inevitably undermine negotiations with countries of proliferation concern, like Iran. And in fact, under the last government in Iran, they would cite Japan as an example of a nuclear fuel cycle development that they wanted to emulate. Of course, this was the reason why the United States decided to abandon reprocessing 35 years ago to help persuade other countries to forego reprocessing. Any country with reprocessing, any country with stocks of separated plutonium is a virtual nuclear weapons state, able to build nuclear weapons very quickly with almost no warning. The existence of such a situation is destabilizing because it can prompt rivals to take steps to hedge against a rapid move to go nuclear. So the third concern, which I think is even more important, or maybe the most important of the three, is a concern about the theft of nuclear materials. And I'm particularly concerned about the physical security of mox fuel in transit and at reactors in storage in Japan. A single mox fuel assembly for a boiling water reactor contains enough plutonium for two nuclear weapons. A single mox fuel assembly for a pressurized water reactor contains twice as much plutonium, enough for four nuclear weapons. And I'm sorry to report that it would not be technically difficult for train terrors to separate that plutonium. Unlike spent fuel, mox fuel poses no significant external radiation hazard once the pellets are extracted from the fuel rods chemical separation can be done in a glove box. And in fact, the chemistry is straightforward and used to be detailed on a webpage. Fortunately, someone took that webpage down. But with the internet archive, of course you can always look it up. Now some people claim it would be impossible for terrors to build a nuclear weapon with this plutonium. And again, I'm very sorry to report that that is simply not true. And even if they were not able to build a nuclear weapon, they could disperse plutonium throughout a city resulting in major economic damage. So Sharon said at the workshop, she asked people to say, well, what is their preferred solution? So my preferred solution would be for Japan to declare an indefinite moratorium on the separation and use of plutonium. That would deal a fatal blow to claims by South Africa and I think any other country that they needed reprocessing and for the US and Japan to work together on spent fuel storage and disposal and the disposal also plutonium. The UK and France could agree to take responsibility for the disposal of Japan's plutonium stocks in Europe. But I understand that's not likely to happen. And so I think the next best option, I was the second option on one of the last slides and that would be for Japan to take seriously it's 20 year old pledge not to produce surplus plutonium. That is plutonium beyond the amount that is necessary for its nuclear power program. The amount of plutonium currently stockpiled in Japan, not to mention the amount stockpiled in Europe is far in excess of what's required even if Japan restarted all of the reactors that are licensed to burn mox fuel. So I would hope that, I'm happy that the restart of Rokasho has now been delayed. Again, I think that helps to relieve this problem of growing plutonium stockpiles. But I would hope that Japan would commit not to operate Rokasho, not to separate any additional plutonium until its stockpiled plutonium is reduced to a minimum working stock and existing plutonium stocks fabricated into mox fuel and loaded into licensed reactors as they become operational. So reprocessing would only be restarted when plutonium stockpiles have been reduced to a minimum working stock and then plutonium would only be produced at the actual rate needed or the rate needed to meet actual demand for reactor fuel. And given the likely reduced demand for mox fuel in the coming decade or so, the restart of Rokasho could I think be delayed many years. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you, Steve. We will start off our discussion amongst ourselves for a little bit. And so I wanted to start off with two questions. One is this issue of running stock. What's, you know, when you sit with industrial guys, they will say, well, we don't look at separated plutonium, we don't look at it in terms of non-proliferation, how many nuclear weapons it is. We need for the mox fuel fab four tons of plutonium to be sitting around so that we can operate this plant in a reasonable or an efficient manner. So that was one issue that came up in Tokyo. And I kind of feel like the two communities are talking past each other. You know, is it possible to do mox fuel fabrication and reprocessing in a safe, secure, I don't mean safe in terms of nuclear safety, but in terms of non-proliferation. Is that even possible because these plants are so large? So, Steve. Well, first I'm not convinced that four tons is a minimum working stock, but even if it is, there are about four tons already of separated plutonium as mox. So the working stock is there. Right. There's 36 tons of additional separated plutonium that could be provided, that could be shipped to Japan to provide working stock. Yeah, after the J mox plant opens. And so this is another factor is that there's really no reason to produce any additional plutonium until J mox is operating and producing is drawing down the existing stock of separated plutonium. And what about the domestic issues, right? My understanding in AMORI is that if they don't start up Rokasho, that some of that spent fuel has to be sent back to utilities, Nobu? Yes, two things about this working stock, running stock. The explanation I got from the company is after separation of plutonium, it will take two to three years before they are going to make a mox with this plutonium. Their explanation is that they have to actually analyze the composition of isotopes in this plutonium, which is different for every road. And that's one thing. So then with this isotope composition, they have to apply for the permission of making a mox fuel to the authorities. So that process takes the years. That's what I got as an explanation. Japan mastered just-in-time delivery in other industries. I think this sounds more like an excuse than a real technical requirement to me, but... Well, anyway, that's the thing about that. Because I'm not a scientist, you know, I'm doing a research scientific science, which is political science. So don't expect me about accuracy and technology, though. But with regard to the politics, well, as I said, the space for the spent fuel stock on site is now getting small and small. So then they have to relocate the spent fuels. But the entire storage space for the location is almost nothing. And they are making another interim storage in so-called Mutsu, the second one. But that is used only for the TEPCO and the, what's that, Nihon Gen-den. It's a Nihon Gen-den, it's a Japan nuclear. What's that? Yeah, a nuclear power company. So they have to make a rearrangement, either with this Mutsu interim storage or with the local community, or hosting nuclear power plants to allow them to sort of, to allow the utilities to store the spent fuel in a dry cask. So that kind of a political process may be sort of a difficult one. In particular, the utilities are still struggling to get permission for the restart. And then the approval from the prefectural is a very important process now at this moment. And so the amendment of arrangement with the local community, probably big task. So that's one of the reason why utilities are hoping to sort of start low-casho and reduce the stockpile for the spent fuel in low-casho as well. If I could just comment on that. Japan is going to have a spent fuel storage problem regardless of when Rokasho, or if Rokasho operates, particularly now that the restart has been delayed to 2016 in full operation until 2019. And there's an obvious solution to that. As you mentioned, it's dry cask storage, which is cheap and safe. And that dry cask storage could be at the reactor sites, as you mentioned, but it also could be at Rokasho. And that would provide a function for Rokasho, an important function. Now I know that there are political difficulties there too, but this is a straightforward, technical option that has been widely deployed in other countries, including Germany and the United States. Another critical issue with regard to local politics is that if the government decide not to start Rokasho, then the spent fuel stored in Rokasho could not be utilized. So now Rokasho Village accepts the spent fuel as a potential resource. But if it seems to be exist as a resource, then there may be worry from the Rokasho is that the Rokasho could be the location for the final disposition. So that's, I think, I'm not really supporting this idea, but just explain that. If I could just add one more thing. I mean, I understand the politics of this, but sort of from a technical point of view, it's not very logical because all Rokasho will do is separate the plutonium from the high level waste and the high level waste remains at Rokasho. There is no final disposal developed in Japan. So Rokasho, by default, but de facto, is a at least long term repository for the radioactive waste that's generated by reprocessing. So to a technical person, it's illogical to say, I won't store spent fuel, but I will store all the radioactive waste that's generated by the reprocessing of that spent fuel. If you're willing to do the second one, you really ought to be able to do the first one, and it's just a matter of the price that people are willing to pay. But to make your head hurt even more, there's almost a financial accounting issue to this. And that is when spent fuel goes from being an asset to a liability because it's not gonna be reprocessed, right? Then that apparently affects the balance sheets of these utilities. I don't know exactly the entire legal ramifications, but the interplay of costs and laws and all these local restrictions is pretty intense. And I don't think that American, maybe policy makers understand that, but the American public, I think, doesn't have a good sense of that. I have another question on the Japan Atomic Energy Commission's agreement, or whatever it is, with the utilities, right? Which is, you need to give us an annual plan for how you're going to utilize this plutonium. So this has been going on for a long time. Yeah, that was agreed in 2003. Right, and every time I pose this question, I seem not to get an answer, which is, so the Japan Atomic Energy Commission has no real legal authority over the utilities, right? I can't say, okay, we're not gonna start reprocessing unless your plan is good enough. So what is actually the function, or how is that viewed in Japan? Is that a reassuring thing? Well, I think before Fukushima, I think there are some sort of room for the maneuvering on how to explain the delay in the program or starting in Rokkashou and the suspension of Monju, which caused the sort of problem of accountability or the gap between the plan for the use of plutonium and mounting stock by plutonium. But I think that the situation probably changed after the Fukushima nuclear accident. So when they will submit the actual plans for the usage of plutonium, that will be put under the very strict scrutiny, in particular of the public. And I think the Atomic Energy Commission may face the sort of strong pressure from the public about this accountability question. So I think it is really a big thing for the utilities to make a plausible, acceptable plan for the usage of plutonium, particularly with the MOCs. So that eventually will be affected by the pace of approval from the Atomic Energy Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the restart of power plants, in particular, which could be, which could use the MOCs fuel. Emma, I wanna, I want you to jump in here on the, so this question of costs, we hear that importing natural gas and energy is done terrible things to Japan's trade deficit. To what extent is the current dissatisfaction with Abe government, how does that play into that current dissatisfaction, or is it just that the, was it the consumption tax was raised recently? I mean, do these bigger questions really affect Japanese public opinion, or are they like American consumers where, like if the price of gas goes down, then we forget that every other political issue in our country. Nobu can probably jump in here if I'm wrong, but I mean, certainly the economic recovery and Japan's, you know, sort of quest for economic growth weighs heavily in Japanese voters' minds, but at least, to me it seems like this whole notion of Japan's need to restart and its reactors and to go back to the goals of what percentage of its electricity is gonna be generated by nuclear power doesn't seem to be a major part of that conversation. I mean, we hear a lot more about these other structural reforms and other measures that the Abe government has taken, and it seems it's been a little divorced, at least, like at the top, at least, there hasn't been a lot of leadership exerted in making the case for why this is particularly important. I don't know, you have a different view. Well, yes, I think I agree with you, but on top of that, I think that it seems to me that Mr. Abe doesn't mobilize his political capital to speed up the approval process for the restart. And I think behind this is probably that the Japanese people are getting used to paying higher price for the electricity. Now the price for electricity now is 30 to 40% higher than it used to be before Fukushima nuclear accident, but we could survive. But at the same time, the exchange rate for yen is getting weak and it used to be a dollar to 85, but now dollar to almost 120. And then our Dutch gas price is four times higher than the Americans. So I think annually, our trade deficits keep on increasing and at this point, I think 50 or 60 billion US dollars in trade deficit and that affect the current balance as well. And we have, as you know, how much like 100 billion US dollars in Japanese government conditions issued. And so if our current balance gets much worse, that may affect the credibility of JGB as well. So this financial circulation may affect in the long run. So although the trade deficit is not solely caused by the increase in the import of natural gas, but more about transfer of our production capability offshore sites, but still, to some extent, the large portion of trade deficits must be caused by the nuclear power plants, sort of a suspension. So that is one of the issues which I think, in my view, the Japanese government need to address properly, but as I said, I think Mr. Abe is really cautious about addressing this question because it may cause some sort of a political uneasiness for him. And it is easier to pin it right on this consumption tax increase, I mean, it's a big jump from five to 8%. Other issues you all want to raise before I open the floor to our audience, okay? So please identify yourself, there are microphones in the back. Sergei Kostyaev, Financial University, Moscow, Russia. I have two questions, very quick. First one, what's around with Japan being a nuclear state? For instance, nuclear weapon had a very positive effect on US and Russia relations. There were no open war between US and Russia. Also, nuclear weapon was pretty positive for Pakistan and India after both states got nuclear weapons, there were no border conflicts, right? And second question, some people in Moscow think that Prime Minister Abe is pretty right-wing and he is trying to distance himself from Washington. So is it possible he might make a decision to create a nuclear weapon, thanks. There were two questions in there. What was the first one? What's wrong with Japan to have a nuclear weapon? Should I start? Well, Japan is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, so it has actually said it wouldn't develop nuclear weapons. I could give you 20 reasons here. Regionally destabilizing, it doesn't need nuclear weapons, it's under the US extended deterrent. I think that given the state of politics in the region, in the last couple years, that development would be extremely, extremely destabilizing. But I'm just starting here. It wouldn't know if it was Steve or even Emma want to continue. Sure. What's wrong with Japan going new? I think that the legal issue may have a little impact, but a more substantial thing. Those who actually claim that no problem, saying that because Japan is an important country for the world, so even though Japan would go new, nuclear, then many countries would not stop the daily relationship with Japan. That's why no big deal. But at the same time, I think if Japan keeps on behaving as a rational state, we are benefiting from behaving rationally within an existing international system, then as long as we behave rationally, we are not able to make a strategy with nuclear weapons to defeat the enemies. Probably Japan, you may need only 10 or a dozen of warheads to destroy Japan. Then how can we compete with some neighboring countries with big land and with the strategic depths? So we are able to build a strategy with New York to win the game. So our only strategy is to behave irrationally. But our irrational behavior may cause uncertainties on our partners in trade and other international businesses. So that eventually undermines our national interest in the wrong ground. If we are playing just one time game of a nuclear exchange, then we may be able to do something, but the politics of diplomacy is kind of repetition, so many repeating, so many things. So I think only way for us to survive in this international system is to behave rationally. So as long as we stay rational, then optional nuclear is not the best scenario for us. I also don't see a lot of indication of Abe actually trying to move away from the United States. I mean, we've seen him emphasize again and again that the US-Japan alliance is really the sort of foundation of his international outlook in the security world. Steve, do you want to add? Well, I agree. I just don't think it's in Japan's long-term security interest. I think it wouldn't stop with Japan having nuclear weapons. Japan would have to ask itself, is it better off with it having nuclear weapons if all of its neighbors then respond correspondingly, China, Korea, and so on? I think the answer is Japan is better off as it currently. Right in front here. Wait for the microphone, please. Steve Winters, a Washington-based researcher. If I could follow up on the question that was just asked and phrase it this way, if I were to try and make sense to myself of what Japan is actually doing overall in terms of this nuclear question, I would say that they are trying to preserve a breakout capability in nuclear weapons. For example, a retired Japanese vice admiral spoke recently at SICE, and he was also a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in Japan, and said the moment the US nuclear umbrella is no longer there, we are becoming a nuclear weapon state immediately. Well, they can't become immediately unless they're ready to become immediately. So whether it's a correct calculation or not, my opinion is their calculation is they're going to be ready for that should that happen, but I agree with you the actual policy is to plan on that umbrella being there and to increase the security relation with the US. But so I don't know if there's a question there. I hope there is. I'm just courting with the American Association for Advancement of Science. It was mentioned that in the nuclear energy strategy of Japan at the moment, and this is just a nuclear energy for baseload possibilities, which implies perhaps shifting more and more into renewables. And I've noted in the press that Japan is now number two with solar energy after China and the US is now third. Has there been any thought that some of these major heavy-duty industries like Hitachi might move into developing energy storage so that you might use renewables as a basis for the baseload requirement and not restart nuclear reactors at all? No, but do you have, does anybody have a? I don't actually know the details, but I'm aware that some companies are trying to develop the more reliable batteries with a large capacity, but I don't think this R&D would not meet that sort of timeline for the restart. And I don't think for the time being for the next decade or so, probably the solar power cannot replace the nuclear energy, I think. Yeah, good. Grid-scale energy storage, electricity storage is the holy grail for much greater market penetration by renewables, by intermittent select wind and solar. And it is at a research stage. It's about at least a factor of five, too expensive today for widespread adoption. But I'm optimistic about the longer term, but that longer term is maybe 10 or 20, at least 10 or 20 years away. Is it expensive compared to luck with the price? Oh, I mean, even compared to the price of electricity from LNG, which is, that would be the marginal price of electricity in Japan. Is it too expensive? No, existing nuclear is quite cheap because the plants are already paid off. So all you have to supply is the fuel and operating. So that's the relevant comparison for restarting reactors. For building new reactors, there is a legitimate question about whether a new nuclear plant is, even in Japan, the cheapest cost of electricity. I have a question back here. Florence Loli from Global America Business Institute. Good to see you, Nobu. Actually, this question is to you. One of your slides, you have something about multilateralization of our Russia. Do you think it's visible? And also, has this been discussed formally, informally, jokingly, or any other fashion with Koreans? Actually, one time, I hoped that the location could be utilized for the international or multilateral purposes, you know, providing services for the other countries, in particular, after Fukushima nuclear accident. You know, we cannot foresee that all nuclear power plants could be restarted. So that means we may not need the full capacity for the usage, for the basic purpose. But because we have already got a huge amount of stockpile of spent fuel, we have to do it first. So in that calculation, I think, we, you know, location may not be able to provide sufficient amount of capacity to serve for the other countries, this position. And then with regard to the discussion with your colleagues, I guess we did, you know, discussion a couple of times. But the thing is, I know the technology that Koreans are pursuing are different from what we are doing in the low-casual. So then that's one thing. The other is, you know, after the Fukushima nuclear accident, I think the credibility of Japanese technology among the Koreans are kind of decreasing. And also, they are also looking at the calculation on the cost and benefit of putting their spent fuel into the low-casual. But in my view, they are more interested in how we could jointly develop the way to have sort of interim storage. And I think the common idea is maybe the interim storage within the dry cask. I think Korea is more ahead of Japan in terms of the implementing dry cask storage. Steve, did you want to answer? So I am not so positive about multilateralization or internationalization of Rikasho, primarily because of the security concerns that I stated earlier. A mox fuel assembly is just too dangerous an object. As I said, it's a fresh assembly. It's not difficult to separate the plutonium from a fresh mox fuel assembly. And you should provide a very high level of security to any shipments, to any storage at a reactor, say in another country like South Korea. I would argue a level of security equivalent to that that you would provide for a nuclear weapon. So there would be the additional costs of using that. But also, and I think sort of more fundamentally, there's no economic case for providing mox fuel to any other country. The cost of producing fresh LEU fuel is less than the cost of producing a mox fuel assembly, even if you write off the entire cost of the Rikasho plant. So this is only possible. This would only be economically attractive for another country if Japan subsidized the production of mox fuel for other countries. I'm just not sure why that would make sense for Japan, but also it would set a very unfortunate precedent for other countries. It would just basically spread the use of mox fuel without any economic rationale. I would just add on the South Korea part of it. Yes, we have discussed this outside of, how would I call it, track one and a half. So some government officials have been there, but it wasn't US government officials who were proposing it. I got the sense from the South Koreans that it was a very political issue. They were not gonna be doing this. But the other problem is, and I would characterize it a little differently, I think, than, well, actually let me build on what you said, Nobu. The South Koreans are interested in pyro-processing, but they're also interested in using that plutonium in their future fast reactors. And so the idea that you would send spent fuel to Rikasho and then you were going to send plutonium back to South Korea is not something, I'm not sure everyone's thought through all the implications of that. And when Taiwan is now considering sending its spent fuel to Arriva, it's not gonna get that plutonium back as far as I can tell. I mean, I don't think all the details have been worked out. I'm not sure there's a contract there. But Miles, I saw your hand up. Were you gonna comment on this? Or you had a separate question. Okay, then I'm gonna go to Ryan, because his hand was up first and then we'll come to you, Miles. Hi, I'm Ryan Schaefer. I manage Japan programs at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. I've got two questions I hope to slip in and they're probably both directed at Professor Akiyama. First one, sounds simple. I think the answer might not be, but what incentive at this point do the utilities have to burn Mox fuel? And in compared to the incentive, the very strong incentive that they have just to get these plants up and running to begin with, because Mox usage in the past has been quite controversial, even in Japan. Question number two is, I think some of the subtext to a few of the comments that you made on Rokasho was that there's the possibility of restarting Rokasho at a reduced throughput, but that will raise the price of operating Rokasho, the per unit price of the Mox that's generated. That price in the beginning was meant to be passed on to consumers, but Japan is deregulating the electricity system. So who pays for that? If it's an investment in energy security for Japan, why should the Japanese rate payers be paying or is it a tax? What happens there? Thank you. I think it's very good question. And as far as I hear from the people in utility, or utility companies, I'm aware of some differences in their positions. And in particular, they are supporting the fuel cycle program, and then they have invested a huge amount on the facility. So on one hand, they would like to utilize the facilities, but at the same time, they are concerned about keeping paying high price under the very strong competitive environment, which will be emerging after the deregulation of the electricity market. So yes, it is a very difficult question for utilities. In particular, among the utilities, they have different level of healthiness of their balance sheet. And some of the other companies may face a real challenge after the deregulation of the electricity market. So I don't know what happens. So I'm also looking, not looking for, but I would like to see actually what happens after there is reform of the Japanese electricity market. But on the other hand, I think there is a strong interest among the nuclear engineers and scientists for the quest for completion of technology or this technology paradigm. And also that they don't want to waste their investment. So that's probably beyond the economic rationality, but still I think there is a strong interest in that. That's your point. Did you want to add anything, Steve, or? Well, it's not directly related, but maybe a word about fast reactors and the sort of underlying economic, underlying rationale for the program originally. Perfect. Let me say this one sentence because I think that the disconnect between views is so, I was quite surprised by this. When we talked about repurposing Rikasho, some of our participants said, yes, yes, we're repurposing it. We're not separating plutonium for fast reactors. And some of us said, oh, okay. So that's just a lead into your comment. So it is important to remember that at one time there was a stronger rationale, technical and economic rationale for the reprocessing and plutonium use program. That this all started in the late 60s and early 70s when it was believed that electricity demand was gonna grow quickly. That much of that demand would be met by nuclear power. And it's not just in Japan, around the world. There were forecasts of very rapidly growing nuclear capacity at the same time. It was believed that uranium was relatively scarce and therefore to supply a large fraction of the world's electricity with nuclear power, you'd have to go to breeder reactors. So that was the foundation of the program. The three things happened over the last 40 years. The first is that electricity demand and in particular nuclear power did not grow nearly as fast as was imagined. The second thing that happened is uranium was found to be much more abundant than was originally believed and other uranium suppliers have come onto the market. And the third thing that happened was breeder reactors were the experience with breeder reactors has been very poor. They've been much more expensive than light water reactors and their safety and operational record has been very poor. So if you were to redo the analysis today, I think there would be no reason to start down this road. Of course, having started down the road, then you think of, well, things you can do with this capability, like we have all this plutonium, we have a reprocessing plant, what are we going to do with it? We're gonna fuel our light water reactors with mox and this is justified for energy security and waste disposal. But for energy security, it's good to keep in mind that you have to reprocess seven tons of light water fuel to produce one ton of mox. So you can only reduce your demand for LEU by one eighth through this strategy. So that is not a powerful motive. And on the waste side, I guess I will just assert, I'm happy to answer any questions that there is no waste disposal advantage to the use of mox fuel in light water reactors. The eventual waste disposal burden is determined more by heat than by volume. Japanese utilities often cite the reduction in volume. That's really not a relevant metric. And in fact, the heat output of the spent mox fuel plus the radioactive waste is higher than the original light water fuel. So there really is no waste disposal advantage. Miles, you have a question? So microphone up here. Question, I guess for all of you, the in your discussion and also more generally in Japan, has there been any thought to using Fukushima as an interim storage site? Well, I think it's too politically sensitive, isn't it? It's too radioactive, Miles. Who's going to object? There actually are some ideas that the Fukushima Daini or number two or some other places should be utilized for some purposes. But I think there are only interim storages for the waste from Fukushima Daini power plants but for the storage of the soil removed for the decontamination. But I don't think the using Fukushima as a kind of a space for the storage for other facilities, that's probably politically incorrect in the Japanese context. So a question back here, Alan and then Dan and then this gentleman. Hi, Alan on from Global America Business Institute. Just a question for all of you on this topic of nuclear security concerns over Mox fuel. I mean, given that there's also this stockpile concern with plutonium, what other immediate term disposition pathway does Japan have? Obviously absent a fast reactor program. I understand that Mox is an ideal but at the same time, how does Japan sort of address you know, the international concerns over its stockpile. And just a comment about Korea, you know, Sharon brief briefly mentioned there is this interest in pyro processing in Korea. Pyro processing jointly separates plutonium with other transuranics that are radioactive. So at least on the nuclear security front, there may be less concerns about threats by non-state actors or at least that risk would be more mitigated. So just, I would just like to get everyone's opinion on what they see if Mox is not the option than what ideally does Japan pursue. Who would like to take that? Mox thing? Well, I think the preferred option for the disposition of spent fuel is what the United States has been doing and continues to do, which is to store it pending the development of a permanent repository. Now all the separated plutonium, what to do with that? As you know, the US has its own problem with separated plutonium from the dismantlement of nuclear weapons. And we had fortunately decided to build a Mox plant in South Carolina to deal with that problem. That plant is so far behind schedule and over budget that it may be abandoned. There may be other ways of just disposing directly of plutonium and deep boreholes. This is always an option that I thought deserved a closer consideration. About alternative methods of reprocessing or disposition like pyro processing, I think you need to do a careful assessment of the actual process. There have been a few studies done of this which suggests that the security benefits are not as large as might be imagined. It really depends on exactly what the product is. So a number of processes that the US had been investigating where other transuranics are separated along with the plutonium, produce a product that is not very radioactive and is directly usable in a nuclear weapon. It's a lot more radioactive than plutonium, but if you're a terrorist, you may not care if you get a dose that's above the level recommended for the public. You may be willing to accept a much higher dose. So I think, and then the other half of this assessment though is what that technology can also be used for. One of the US concerns about pyro processing for technology for other countries is that same technology could be used to produce pretty pure plutonium. So even if the proposal is to produce a somewhat dirty mixture that would be more hazardous to handle, the same technologies can be used to produce a much purer product. We have a question up here, Dan. Oh, I'm sorry, go please. It's a nuclear security question, counter-terrorism thing. At this moment, Japanese nuclear facilities are upgrading their counter measures or sort of deploying the armed forces. Although there are some sort of restrictions of the, for these armed forces to access in particular the police forces are located on the site, but maybe the focus is about the personal reliability program, how to sort of check the background of the personnel engaged in the sort of works on site. And our government is in the process of creating the new sort of a scheme for the reliability program. But that's, actually I'm sitting in the panel, so I really cannot make a sort of comment really, but what I can tell is the sort of basic framework of this program is to ask to sort of let utilities and other companies sort of check the workers, employees of their backgrounds based upon various sources of information and make sure that there would be no suspicious people engaged in the sort of work which requires access to the sort of restricted area. Although probably we may have to have much higher level of sort of security clearance system, but I think as a start I think it is important to introduce the system first. Yeah, this is not earth shattering in the US context, but it's a pretty big deal in Japan because they haven't had this kind of system before. Question right here, Dan Horner and then in the back. Hi, Dan Horner from Arms Control today. There've been conflicting or at least confusing accounts of what US officials have said to their Japanese counterparts on this issue and how Japanese officials have interpreted those comments. So I wonder if the panelists could shed some light a lot. Maybe start with Steve Federer, since you were in the government for a while. What were the interactions while you were in government and what you know of afterward? And then if the other panelists could add to that. Thanks. What is this? What has the US said regarding what concerns the US has about the non-proliferation implications of proceeding with Rikasho and the whole fuel cycle program? Has the US urged Japan to stop that, to scale back and other elements of restarting the nuclear reactors? Well, I suppose there are different views within the US government. And without commenting specifically on any particular message, I think sometimes a given message is heard in different ways where people interpret it the way they'd like to. So under the previous government, the decision to phase out nuclear power but operate Rikasho and to produce more plutonium, that was seen with some alarm because all that would serve to do is produce plutonium without any conceivable use. So when some US officials expressed concern about this situation, about, you know, or excess stockpiles, that could be interpreted as, oh, you need to use the plutonium as mocks. Or it could be interpreted as, why are you producing this plutonium that doesn't have any identified purpose? So I think there is a widespread concern in the administration about the accumulation of excess plutonium stockpiles, but how you address that problem, I would say there's also a concern in the US government about the US asking Japan to do something that it can't politically do. Your requests have to be seen as reasonable and if they're not, all you're doing is upsetting US-Japan relations to really no productive ends. So I think that was another, people wanted to highlight this concern about excess stockpiles while recognizing that Japan would have to make its own decisions about how to address that. On this non-proliferation concerns or interest, I think that is somewhat to do with the classic question whether proliferation is a technical problem or political problem. And I think in the past, I mean traditionally, Japanese nuclear community is pretty much dominant on the thoughts or the technicality of proliferation and that's not really about politics. So I think the traditionally Japanese nuclear experts tend to think that as far as they meet the requirement of the safeguards of the IAEA, that means to meet technical sort of sufficiency of ensuring non-proliferation, then it is okay. So it's question of necessary condition and sufficient conditions. I think currently people consider the technical, a fulfillment of technical requirements with safeguards is necessary condition but not sufficient enough. So I think Japanese are learning about this necessary condition and sufficient condition distinctions by introducing the thoughts on the political implication of non-proliferation. So the Dr. Feta mentioned that Iran is referring Japan as a kind of model and then what Japanese claim is Japan model is not about in full scale fuel cycle as no nuclear open states, but we have to add the full compliance with the IAEA safeguards plus adding the sort of granted status of integrated safeguards. So, but that's probably still not sufficient in a sense for the non-proliferation experts in particular in the United States, right? So that's why we are talking more about accountability of fuel cycle program and how they are going to use separated plutonium in order to reduce the anxieties or concerns of the international audience. Gentlemen, towards the end. Dr. Stapleton Roy from the Wilson Center. Dr. Feta, you referred to the fact that plutonium stockpiles create the potential for rapid nuclear breakout. No one doubts that Japan has the technical capability for rapid breakout, but I wonder if you could comment on the relative speed of a breakout for a plutonium based weapon on the part of terrorist groups or countries that do not have the technological capabilities that Japan, as opposed to a hotty and rich uranium based weapon? Well, as you might imagine, it's hard to comment in detail on that. You don't wanna, but. It has commonly been assumed that a plutonium weapon is much more difficult to master than a weapon that's based on H.E.U. because plutonium produces neutrons and you have to prevent the predetination of the plutonium as you assemble it. But this is not, I think perhaps people have overestimated the technical challenge and it's quite unfortunate. It would be nice if nature had made it more difficult, but I think we should not regard plutonium as any less dangerous as high enriched uranium even for terrorist use. Yes, even the plutonium that is separated from spent light water reactor fuel. So I will say one thing, I think it's in our summary in the workshop report that sometimes what you hear in conversations is, well Japan would never use this reactor grade plutonium because that's kind of beneath them, right? If you're gonna make weapons or make a stockpile of weapons, you're gonna make some nice fresh plutonium that's good weapons grade. I will say that even though many of us may think, well yes, that's true, that does not provide a lot of comfort or reassurance in the long run. So one of the things that came out of this workshop is that messaging is really important. And I think that the way you depicted it, Nobu, the differences and the kind of issues that we in the US, at least mostly in the non-pro community and the Japanese, the way that you view those different issues and the importance, that all has to be factored into how do both sides communicate with each other in a way that we're really talking to each other and hearing it rather than just talking past each other. We are almost out of time. I would like to give my panelists each an opportunity to make some last remarks in case there was something you didn't get to say before we close up. So I'll start with you, Emma. You're good? Well, I think the issue of plutonium question in Japan involves both politics and technology. And because probably I'm from political science background, I see more importance in politics. And in particular, that's true for the non-pro population. But at the same time, the bottom line is the importance of a very good sort of US-Japan relationship. And I think that all Japanese are aware that without a good bilateral relationship, they are not able to even pursue the field cycle program. And but at the same time, I'm a little bit concerned about the sort of heavy politicization of this issue at the same time, in particular toward the 2018. And if that issue is messed up, then I don't think that is not really healthy for overall US-Japan relationship. So I would like to see more kind of a sober dialogue between Japan and the United States on the credibility of Japanese interpretation, explanation of what they're gonna do with separated plutonium and think about how to reduce the stockpile of plutonium. Steve, any? Well, I'd like to comment on something that Nobuji said about the Japanese viewing non-proliferation in a very technical way. That as long as the program, as long as facilities are under safeguards, as long as a country's in compliance with its non-proliferation, its safeguards obligations that everything should be fine. I'm not sure that's really true. I think that Japan would not be comfortable if a dozen, two dozen other countries had reprocessing programs and large stockpiles of plutonium. I think Japanese policy makers recognize that this is a special and dangerous technology that the fact that it provides a latent nuclear weapons capability is in the back of the mind. But that Japan has this special status. It is the only country without nuclear weapons that's separating and stockpiling plutonium. And that was a very hard one status. That was a real point of contention. And I think having achieved that special status, I think Japan is reluctant to give it up. So I think that is a major factor that's sort of unrecognized. And the problem of course is that I think it's hard to keep this special status just for one country. That if Japan continues this activity that it's inevitable that other countries will want the same right privilege. Well, thank you all for joining us today. Thank you all for participating. Please join me in thanking our speaker. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. To see the interviews that we've posted. And have a great day.