U.S. has maintained nuclear subs need to discharge radioactive liquids upon their visits to Japanese ports

Japan Press Weekly

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U.S. has maintained nuclear subs need to discharge radioactive liquids upon their visits to Japanese ports

Declassified U.S. documents show the possibility that U.S. nuclear-powered submarines may have discharged radioactive liquids in Japan’s territorial waters for 44 years since their first visit to Japan.

Niihara Shoji, an international affairs analyst, revealed this based on documents he obtained at the U.S. National Archives concerning Japan-U.S. negotiations on U.S. requests to Japan regarding U.S. nuclear submarines’ visits to Japan.

Telegrams and other documents exchanged in 1963 and 1964 between the U.S. Embassy in Japan and the U.S. Department of State show that the United States rejected Japan’s request to refrain from discharging radioactive wastes in Japan’s territorial waters, maintaining that releasing nuclear wastes is necessary.

In the Japan-U.S. negotiations in the run-up to the first U.S. nuclear submarine visit to Japan in November 1964, the Japanese side requested the U.S. to refrain from discharging liquid/solid radioactive materials from nuclear subs without approval from Japanese authorities concerned.

The U.S. Department of State not only rejected the Japanese request but instructed the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to remind Japan that U.S. subs, when warming up their primary coolant, require discharging a small amount of low-level radioactive liquids.

When Japan requested the United States to submit data on U.S. nuclear subs for the purpose of confirming their safety, the United States rejected it on the grounds that all relevant U.S. data are classified.

Early last August, the U.S. government recognized that trace amounts of radioactivity leaked from the nuclear-powered submarine Houston at Japanese ports over a period of two years from June 2006. The Houston has often visited Japan.

Based on the Fact Sheet on U.S. Nuclear Powered Warship Safety (issued in April 2006), the U.S. and Japanese governments are emphasizing the ‘safety’ of the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington, which will soon be deployed to Yokosuka Port in Kanagawa Prefecture.

The Fact Sheet states, “Specifically, U.S. policy prohibits discharge of radioactive liquids, including primary coolant, from U.S. NPWs within 12 miles of shore, including in Japanese ports.”

This completely contradicts the U.S. State Department telegrams that stated that discharging radioactive wastes in Japan’s territorial waters is necessary.

Now that the Fact Sheet’s assurance of safety has turned out to be fictitious, no U.S. safety campaign can ease the public concern about possible U.S. NPW nuclear reactor incidents. - Akahata, September 7, 2008