The Other "Japan Model": Carter, Fukuda, and the Tokaimura Agreement of 1977

It is well-known that post-1952 Japan has provided a role model for developing countries as a lightly-armed trading state. Much less is known about the impact of rapidly-growing Japan’s dual-use nuclear programs on the global South in the late twentieth century. At the end of the

1970s, indeed, the Japanese nuclear plant capacity rose to the world’s second largest behind the United States. This study sheds light on the birth of the understudied “Japan model” in 1977—developing sufficient technological and economic capabilities to achieve energy self-sufficiency and quickly produce nuclear weapons if necessary, while at the same time committing to the prevention of further proliferation. The first part of the presentation examines U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s efforts in containing the further expansion of Japan’s nuclear latency in their bilateral meetings and at the Group of Seven (G-7) Summit in London. It also scrutinizes the ways in which Japanese Premier Fukuda Takeo succeeded at beginning operations at the Tokaimura Reprocessing Plant in 1977 despite Carter’s objections. The Tokaimura Agreement granted Japan U.S. permission to separate plutonium from U.S.-origin spent fuel—the first case since the participants in the 1958 U.S.-Euratom Agreement. The final part analyzes the effects of the Tokaimura settlement in the developing world, particularly in the Korean Peninsula, South Asia, and the Middle East. Regardless of Washington and Tokyo’s publicized commitments to nonproliferation, the startup of the Tokaimura facility encouraged those nuclear aspirants to seek the right to reprocess in the name of the Japanese path. Relying chiefly on recently-available archival and personal records in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the presenter argues that the “Japan model” has played a vital catalyst role in increasing the proliferation risk of nuclear fuel cycles with plutonium breeding.