先ほどご紹介した英誌「Economist」最新号に掲載の「日本のエネルギー危機」に関連して目下海外の日本研究者、専門家たちの間で、日本の核燃料サイクル問題が盛んに議論されています（その１つを以下に）。これらの議論の多くは誤解や勉強不足によるもののようですが、これらに対しては出来るだけ的確な反論や状況説明をしておいた方が良いと思います。　つきましては、最新の国内の状況をまとめた英文の資料（できれば電子化されていて、なるべく簡潔なもの）をご存知の方はどなたでも至急ご一報ください。

This weeks' "Economist" has a very interesting article "Darkness
Falls in Tokyo". What they have to report is truly alarming, as far
as Japan's energy future is concerned. It is a combination of
incompetence , promotion of special interest groups and wishful
thinking that means Japan's atomic energy industry will start to
come to a complete halt within as little as two years.

The problem is that nuclear waste has been building up in Japan
plants at a very fast rate, and there is no way to dispose of it or
reprocess it in Japan. At that rate this build up is going, within two
years, nuclear reactors will have to start shutting down, because
there is nowhere to dispose of the material. By 2010, all 53 of
Japan's nuclear reactors could be forced to shut down, if this
problem is not resolved.

METI is pinning its hopes on the reprocessing plant being built by
the Japan Nuclear Fuel Consortium. However, it is badly delayed
and licensing problems are said to be getting increasingly politically
complex, to the point where there is a better than even chance that
it may be allowed an operating license at all. In addition, there is a
problem what to do about the disposal of the plutonium that this
facility will produce, that no one has yet been able to resolve. The
fast breeder reactor that was supposed to use this fuel has been
stopped by a High Court decision which cited "serious and
unforgivable mistakes" by the government at a prototype plant.

The Japanese Asahi Shinbun has also occasionally carried articles
on this same topic. The "Economist" bel;eives that if the level of
denial which exists both in Japan's political world and the nuclear
industry continues, then many, if not all, nuclear facilities will have
to be shut down temporarily or even permanently.

W.T.Stonehill