If Japan Really Had Plutonium for 5,000 Nukes, Washington Would Have Collapsed — How Asahi and Anti-Nuclear Lawyers Manufactured the “Plutonium Threat”
This chapter, based on a serialized essay by Masayuki Takayama in the Japanese monthly magazine Themis, dissects how the claim that “Japan has 47 tons of plutonium—enough for 5,000–6,000 nuclear warheads” was manufactured and circulated. It explains the technical distinction between weapons-grade plutonium from graphite reactors and reactor-grade plutonium from light-water reactors, recounts the KEDO negotiations with North Korea, and exposes how Japanese anti-nuclear lawyers and activists lobbied in Washington to frame Japan as a proliferation threat. The article argues that Asahi Shimbun and allied groups used “foreign pressure” as a tool to turn an unfounded narrative into political leverage against Japan’s nuclear policy and energy strategy.

If it were true that Japan really possessed enough plutonium for five thousand nuclear warheads, the U.S. government would have fallen apart long ago.
(2021-10-30)

The following is from a column by Masayuki Takayama, serialized in the subscription-only monthly magazine Themis, which arrived at my home today.
I began subscribing to this magazine in order to read his series.
This essay, too, proves that he is the one and only truly exceptional journalist in the postwar world.
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for people all over the world.
And it is indispensable reading for voters heading to the polls tomorrow.

Asahi Shimbun & Anti-Nuclear Lawyers: Spreading Lies Using “Foreign Pressure.”

North Korea Rejects South Korean Light-Water Reactors.

North Korea’s electricity supply depends on the Supung Dam, built by Japan before the war, and a single 5,000-kilowatt experimental reactor provided by the former Soviet Union.
This small experimental reactor is in fact extremely problematic.
Technically it is a graphite-moderated, gas-cooled reactor—the same type as Chernobyl.
It can run on natural uranium (U) just as it is.
When you burn natural uranium in a graphite reactor, the roughly 1% U-235 undergoes fission, heating the carbon dioxide coolant and driving a turbine to generate electricity.
However, in the reactor core, the remaining 99% U-238, which does not normally fission, absorbs neutrons and is transformed into Pu-239, which does fission.
If you reprocess the fuel, you can extract this Pu-239 and obtain material for a fine Nagasaki-type atomic bomb.

A Hiroshima-type uranium bomb requires turning natural uranium into gas, then running it through centrifuges again and again to painstakingly separate and enrich the tiny fraction of U-235.
This consumes vast amounts of electricity and time.
By contrast, with a graphite reactor, you simply burn natural uranium and a nuclear bomb practically falls into your hands with minimal effort.
North Korea began doing exactly that.

President Bill Clinton, alarmed by the nuclear ambitions of this rogue state, proposed the following:
“If you dismantle your graphite reactor, we will build two 1-million-kilowatt light-water reactors for you.
Until they are completed, we will provide 500,000 tons of heavy oil each year.”
This was the KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization) arrangement.

North Korea accepted this in March 1995 but hesitated when it learned that the light-water reactors would be built by South Korea.
The previous autumn, the Seongsu Bridge over the Han River, built by South Korea, had collapsed in perfectly calm weather, killing thirty-two people.
And in the autumn of the year the agreement was signed, the five-story Sampoong Department Store in Seoul suddenly collapsed, killing more than fifty people.
Knowing the shoddy reputation of “Made in Korea,” the North reportedly said, “Who could possibly trust a Korean-made nuclear reactor, sumida?” and the KEDO framework fell apart.

North Korea then continued operating its graphite reactor, extracting plutonium and conducting multiple nuclear tests, and now basks in the feeling of being a nuclear power.

Anti-Japanese Lobbying in Washington.

Although KEDO ultimately failed, the world did learn something important.
Spent fuel from light-water reactors contains a large fraction of Pu-240, which cannot be used to make nuclear bombs.
Therefore, replacing graphite reactors with light-water reactors poses no weapons risk.
If sufficient Pu-239 could be produced in a light-water reactor, there would have been no point in offering it as a “safe” alternative to the graphite reactor in the first place.
This is simple enough that even a grade-school child could understand it, but apparently lawyer Sayo Saruta, who likes to think of herself as a brilliant attorney, could not.

She is a graduate of Waseda University and works in the same law office as anti-nuclear activist lawyer Yuichi Kaido, who is also known as the lover of Mizuho Fukushima.
Naturally, she opposes nuclear power and constitutional revision, and advocates that Japan adopt an anti-American stance and become closer to South Korea, with which Fukushima maintains particularly close ties.

On the eve of the renewal of the U.S.–Japan Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, Saruta traveled to Washington for what she proudly described in AERA as “lobbying on nuclear issues” with U.S. senators and presidential advisers.
And what did she lobby for?
She told them, “Japan has accumulated forty-seven tons of plutonium from light-water reactor spent fuel—enough for five thousand nuclear warheads—and this threatens the United States’ stated non-proliferation policy.”

According to her account, the advisers furrowed their brows and responded, “This is a serious issue.
I will raise it with the State Department.”

The United States is extraordinarily sensitive to the idea of Japan possessing nuclear weapons.
During the previous presidential election, Joe Biden said to Donald Trump, “Have you forgotten that we rewrote Japan’s constitution so that Japan, which has the right to retaliate with two nuclear strikes, could never build its own nuclear arsenal?”
New Hampshire state legislator Nick Levasseur, watching Japan’s renewed activism on the global stage, wrote in a chat, “That’s why two (nukes) weren’t enough,” which drew a flood of “likes.”
The issue is that sensitive.

If it were true that Japan possessed enough plutonium for five thousand nuclear warheads, any U.S. administration that left such a situation unchecked would have disintegrated long ago.
If American lawmakers and advisers really took Saruta’s uninformed claims seriously and questioned the State Department, that in itself would have been headline news.

Yet Saruta’s lies circulated freely inside Japan.
After AERA printed her story, anti-nuclear lawyer Hiroyuki Kawai, a colleague of Kaido, wrote in Asahi Shimbun’s “My Viewpoint” column that “A single nuclear power plant contains enough plutonium for a thousand Hiroshima-sized bombs.”

Turning Lies into “Truth” with Foreign Pressure.

Tetsu Kawasaki of Peace Boat, affiliated with ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), which won the Nobel Peace Prize, also declared in Asahi’s supplement GLOBE that “ICAN is anti-nuclear and deeply concerned about Japan’s accumulated plutonium,” thereby repeating the same falsehoods.
This man is close to Mizuho Fukushima and Kiyomi Tsujimoto, who was arrested for fraudulently obtaining twenty million yen in public funds.

Asahi Shimbun had its satellite publications repeat the lie, confirmed that it was not being publicly challenged, and then chief editorial writer Kiyoki Nemoto gave the order:
“From now on, spread the plutonium lie boldly.
Use it to choke off nuclear power and force a switch to Chinese-made solar power.”

The result was the major editorial “End the Nuclear Fuel Cycle” (May 14, 2020).
Its key claim was that “Japan now possesses forty-six tons of plutonium, equivalent to six thousand nuclear bombs,” and therefore must abandon the nuclear fuel cycle.
It’s almost comical that Nemoto took Saruta’s “five thousand warheads” lie and arbitrarily inflated it by another thousand.

Since then, Asahi has run articles at least five or six times—some signed by science reporters—repeating the line “47 tons of plutonium, six thousand bombs.”
At the root of this rhetoric lies Saruta’s claim that “U.S. advisers are gravely concerned,” presented as foreign pressure from Washington.

If it comes from the United States, you can even take down a prime minister like Kakuei Tanaka.
Surely this was meant as a direct call for the immediate shutdown of all nuclear power plants.
In the end, however, the only major outlet to echo the campaign loudly was Mainichi Shimbun, whose credibility has been in tatters since the fabricated “Hundred-Man Killing Contest” stories.

Even so, Nemoto seems to think he has won.
Recently, Asahi’s opinion page ran a feature on “Foreign Pressure,” giving pride of place to Saruta as a “key contributor.”
Saruta smugly wrote, “The government, too, has used foreign pressure to improve Japan’s reputation.”
In reality, she used foreign pressure to make lies look like truth.

Calling her a “shyster” might be too generous.
“Con artist” is probably a more fitting term.