Coverage on a secret document
detailing an international nuclear waste disposal site that Japan and the
United States had planned to build in Mongolia, for which I won the
Vaughan-Ueda Memorial Prize for 2011, has highlighted the difficulties in
dealing with radioactive waste.

The secret plan surfaced as the
crisis at the tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant has stirred controversy
over the pros and cons of nuclear power.

I learned that the Japanese Economy,
Trade and Industry Ministry and the U.S. Department of Energy had been secretly
negotiating the plan with Mongolia since the autumn of 2010 when I interviewed
a U.S. nuclear expert on the phone on April 9, 2011.

“Would you please help the
Mongolian people who know nothing about the plan. Mongolia is friendly to
Japan, Japanese media certainly has influence on the country,” the expert
said.

I flew to Ulan Bator, the capital of
Mongolia, on April 22, and met with then Ambassador Undraa Agvaanluvsan with
the Mongolian Foreign Ministry in charge of negotiations on the plan, at the
VIP room of a cafe.

Before I asked the ambassador some
questions getting to the heart of the plan, we asked my interpreter to leave
the room just as we had agreed in advance. The way the ambassador talked
suddenly became more flexible after I stopped the recorder and began asking her
questions in English. She explained the process and the aim of the negotiations
and even mentioned candidate sites for the disposal facility.

After the interview that lasted for
more than two hours, the ambassador said she heard of a similar plan in
Australia and asked me to provide Mongolia with any information on it, highlighting
the Mongolian government”s enthusiasm about overcoming competition with
Australia in hosting the disposal facility.

I subsequently visited three areas
where the Mongolian government was planning to build nuclear power stations.
Japan and the United States were to provide nuclear power technology to
Mongolia in return for hosting the disposal facility. I relied on a global
positioning system for driving in the vast, grassy land to head to the sites.
All the three candidate sites, including a former air force base about 200
kilometers southeast of Ulan Bator, are all dry land. No source of water
indispensable for cooling down nuclear reactors, was found at any of these
sites and a lake at one of the sites had dried up.

Experts share the view that nuclear
plants cannot be built in areas without water. I repeatedly asked Mongolian
officials responsible for nuclear power policy how they can build nuclear
plants at the sites without water. However, they only emphasized that all the
three sites meet the safety standards for nuclear plants set by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

An Economy, Trade and Industry
Ministry official, who is familiar with Mongolian affairs, said,
“Mongolians are smart but their knowledge of atomic energy isn”t that good
…”

In other words, Japan and the United
States proposed to build a spent nuclear waste disposal facility in Mongolia, a
country that has little knowledge of nuclear energy.

In 2010, the administration of then
Prime Minister Naoto Kan released a new growth strategy with special emphasis
on exports of nuclear power plants. However, there is no facility in Japan that
can accept spent nuclear fuel, putting itself at a disadvantage in its
competition with Russia, France and other countries that have offered to sell
nuclear plants and accept radioactive waste as a package.

A Japanese negotiator said,
“The plan to build a disposal facility in Mongolia was aimed at making up
for our disadvantage in selling nuclear power stations.”

The United States wanted to find
another country that will accept spent nuclear fuel that can be converted to
materials to develop nuclear weapons in a bid to promote its nuclear
non-proliferation policy.

Both the Japanese and U.S. ideas are
understandable. However, as Mongolia has just begun developing uranium mines
and has not benefited from atomic energy, I felt that it would be unreasonable
to shift radioactive waste to Mongolia without explaining the plan to the
Mongolian people.

During my stay in Mongolia, I
learned that many people there donated money equal to their daily wages to
victims of the March 11, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. I was also present
when the Mongolian people invited disaster evacuees from Miyagi Prefecture to
their country. I could not help but shed tears when seeing the Mongolian
people”s goodwill. My interpreter even joked, “You cry too much.”

I did not feel a sense of exaltation
from learning the details of the secret negotiations on the disposal site. I
rather felt ashamed of being a citizen of Japan, which was promoting the plan.

The Fukushima nuclear crisis that broke
out following the March 11, 2011 quake and tsunami has sparked debate on
overall energy policy. Some call for an immediate halt to nuclear plants while
others insist that such power stations are indispensable for Japan”s overall
energy, industrial and security policies.

“The matter isn”t limited to
nuclear energy. Our generations have consumed massive amounts of oil and
coal,” a Finish government official said.

The Mainichi scoop on the secret
plan sparked campaigns in Mongolia to demand that the plan on a spent nuclear
fuel disposal facility be scrapped and that relevant information be fully
disclosed.

Bowing to the opposition, Mongolian
President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj declared in the U.N. General Assembly session
in September last year that the country can never host a radioactive waste
disposal facility.

Yukiya Amano, director general of
the IAEA, which is dubbed a “nuclear watchdog,” says, “Those who
generate radioactive waste must take responsibility for disposing of it. It”s
unfair to expect someone else to take care of it.”

However, human beings have yet to
find a solution to problems involving nuclear waste.

(By Haruyuki Aikawa, Europe General
Bureau)