The diver­sion of U.S. clas­si­fied tech­nol­o­gy began dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion after it allowed a $10 bil­lion reac­tor sale to Chi­na. Japan protest­ed that sen­si­tive tech­nol­o­gy was being sold to a poten­tial nuclear adver­sary. The Rea­gan and George H.W. Bush admin­is­tra­tions per­mit­ted sen­si­tive tech­nol­o­gy and nuclear mate­ri­als to be trans­ferred to Japan despite laws and treaties pre­vent­ing such trans­fers. High­ly sen­si­tive tech­nol­o­gy on plu­to­ni­um sep­a­ra­tion from the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy’s Savan­nah Riv­er Site and Han­ford nuclear weapons com­plex, as well as tens of bil­lions of dol­lars worth of breed­er reac­tor research was turned over to Japan with almost no safe­guards against pro­lif­er­a­tion. Japan­ese sci­en­tist and tech­ni­cians were giv­en access to both Han­ford and Savan­nah Riv­er as part of the trans­fer process.

While Japan has refrained from deploy­ing nuclear weapons and remains under an umbrel­la of U.S. nuclear pro­tec­tion, NSNS has learned that the coun­try has used its elec­tri­cal util­i­ty com­pa­nies as a cov­er to allow the coun­try to amass enough nuclear weapons mate­ri­als to build a nuclear arse­nal larg­er than Chi­na, India and Pak­istan com­bined. . . .

. . . That secret effort was hid­den in a nuclear pow­er pro­gram that by March 11, 2011– the day the earth­quake and tsuna­mi over­whelmed the Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi Nuclear Plant – had amassed 70 met­ric tons of plu­to­ni­um. Like its use of civil­ian nuclear pow­er to hide a secret bomb pro­gram, Japan used peace­ful space explo­ration as a cov­er for devel­op­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed nuclear weapons deliv­ery sys­tems.

Polit­i­cal lead­ers in Japan under­stood that the only way the Japan­ese peo­ple could be con­vinced to allow nuclear pow­er into their lives was if a long line of gov­ern­ments and indus­try hid any mil­i­tary appli­ca­tion. For that rea­son, a suc­ces­sion of Japan­ese gov­ern­ments col­lud­ed on a bomb pro­gram dis­guised as inno­cent ener­gy and civ­il space pro­grams. . . .

“The Yakuza and the Nuclear Mafia: Nation­al­iza­tion Looms for TEPCO” by Jake Adel­stein; The Atlantic Wire; 12/30/2011.

EXCERPT . . . In June we report­ed that yakuza were work­ing at the Fukushi­ma nuclear pow­er plant as cleanup crews and man­u­al labor, but the post-melt­down yakuza ties were only the tip of the ice­berg. This month, a new book was pub­lished, Yakuza and The Nuclear Indus­try: Diary of An Under­cov­er Reporter Work­ing at the Fukushi­ma Plant in which a for­mer yakuza fan mag­a­zine edi­tor Tomo­hiko Suzu­ki reports on the nuclear busi­ness-indus­tri­al-polit­i­cal and media com­plex in Japan known as the “nuclear mafia” and Japan’s actu­al mafia: the yakuza. The book is already gen­er­at­ing con­tro­ver­sy and renewed exam­i­na­tion of Japan’s “dark empire” and its ties to the under­world. It presents more sol­id pieces of evi­dence that Japan’s nuclear indus­try is a black hole of crim­i­nal malfea­sance, incom­pe­tence, and cor­rup­tion. . . .