JAPAN - Dismantling World's Nuclear Arsenal, Update

Live and learn.  I was not aware that Japan had any weapons-grade plutonium, given their experience with being on the receiving end of such weapons.

"Japan surrenders part of its nuclear stockpile for disposal" PBS NewsHour 3/24/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): ..... dismantling the world’s nuclear arsenal.

Japan agreed today it would relinquish enough weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium to make dozens of nuclear weapons.  The announcement came as leaders from around the globe gathered in The Hague for a nuclear security summit.

Matthew Bunn, an expert on nuclear proliferation issues at the John F. Kennedy school of government at Harvard University, joins us to explain the day’s developments.

So what led up to this handover, and if, in fact, they were so insecure, this fissile material, then what took so long?

MATTHEW BUNN, Harvard University:  Well, this is something the United States has been talking about with Japan for some years.

And I wouldn’t say that it was very insecure in Japan.  There have been some important security improvements there in recent years.  After the 9/11 attacks, they added armed guards at this site.  There have been some more significant security improvements quite recently.

But this is really a tremendous step forward.  This is some of the best material for terrorists if they could get their hands on it, that exists in states without nuclear weapons.  And now we’re going to be getting rid of it entirely.  It’s material that’s really the same stuff you would get if you broke into a U.S. nuclear weapons facility, but not with the same kind of security that exists at those facilities here in the United States.