Japanese may ask U.S. for stable uranium flow

Press, 18 February 1977, Page 5

Japanese may ask U.S. for stable uranium flow

NZPA-Reuter Tokyo The Japanese Prime Minister (Mr Kukuda) has indicated that he may ask for a stable American supply of enriched uranium to Japan in his talks with President Carter next month. Mr Fukuda was answering an Opposition question in Parliament which sought the Prime Minister’s view about the reported policy, announced last October bv the then United States President. Mr Gerald Ford, against the ‘commercialisation” of nuc'ear reprocessing — the extraction of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. Mr Ford then also said that he was serving notice that the United States would cut off all supplies of nuclear fuel to any nation that violated safeguard agreements aimed at preventing the manufacture of weapons. Mr Fukuda told a Lower

House Budget committee meeting that he understood the United Sstates concern about the spread of nuclear weapons. But (the American) cooperation with Japan should inot be hindered since there was no fear of Japan’s making nuclear weapons, he said. If the matter was taken up at his meetings with President Carter in Washington on March 21 and 22, Mr Fukuda said, he would stress his country’s three-point nonnuclear principle and state that peaceful uses of nuclear power were a different mater from manufacturing nui clear weapons. ; Japan depends upon the ! United States for enriching uranium for its power reactors. In efforts to establish its own nuclear-fuel recycling, ’apan has built a pilot nuclear reprocessing plant which

is expected to go on trial this year. At the same committee meeting, Mr Sosuke Uno. director-general of the Science and Technology Agency, said that the Government would appeal to the United States for consent so that the reprocessing plant could start work. A Japanese Government mission, headed by Mr Goro Inque, acting chairman of the | Atomic Power Commission, will shortly visit the United States to sound out on the Carter Administration’s nuclear policy and explain Japan’s atomic policy to United States officials, according to a spokesman for the Science and Technology Agency. Mr Inque is scheduled to stay in the United States from February 18 to 28 to hold talks with officials of the State Department, the Disarmament Agency, and other concerned offices.