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Japan’s pronuclear lobby has recruited a cartoon character to convince
people that plutonium is so safe you can drink it. In a promotional video,
‘Pluto Boy’ grumbles that plutonium is given a bad press and that there
is no evidence it causes cancer.

Last week, the Japanese media criticised the video, which has been sent
to local authorities throughout the country. In response, the Power Reactor
and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation, which commissioned the ten-minute
cartoon, says it will not send out any more copies.

The star of the show is a small boy with tentacles and a green cap marked
‘Pu’, for plutonium. Pluto Boy explains that plutonium is not as dangerous
as most people think. ‘Even if you drink plutonium in water,’ he advises,
‘it won’t be absorbed by your stomach, and it will be flushed out of your
body.’ Pluto Boy also says ‘there have been no reported cases in which someone
has got cancer because of plutonium’.

Takashi Daimon, spokesman for the corporation, says: ‘Our argument is
that if plutonium gets into a reservoir or a pond it will sink, because
it’s heavy. So very little will contaminate the water. If the water is drunk,
the plutonium will pass through the body and be flushed out.’ Daimon also
says that according to research data, ‘there are no clear examples of cancer
being caused by plutonium’.

Nick Priest, manager of the biomedical research laboratory at AEA Technology
in Harwell, says the Japanese claims are wrong in parts. Only about 4 parts
per 10 000 of plutonium is absorbed as it passes through the gut. ‘But if
you swallow enough, you can have an appreciable dose.’

Proving that a case of cancer was caused by plutonium is very difficult,
says Priest. Nevertheless, one worker at the American nuclear waste site
at Hanford in Washington is thought to have died of a plutonium-induced
cancer of the spine. This case ‘is characteristic of what we’d expect from
plutonium’, he says.

Pluto Boy is the latest ploy by the pronuclear lobby to win back public
support for its plutonium-based nuclear power programme. Last week Japan’s
Electric Power Association blamed the public’s ‘lack of understanding’ for
its decision to postpone the construction of a prototype fast breeder reactor.
Fast breeders produce more plutonium than they use. The start of construction
will be delayed for at least five years until 2005. The reactor was to have
been a successor to Monju, Japan’s pilot fast-breeder, which will start
operating in April to test the technology. But technical problems at Monju
have held up the programme.

The basic rationale for producing power from plutonium is now being
questioned. Thirty years ago, uranium was scarce and expensive. Japan –
like other countries – saw plutonium as a potentially cheap way to generate
energy. Since then, large supplies of uranium have been found and the price
has fallen. Critics now say using plutonium is a costly mistake.

Earlier this month, the Nuclear Control Institute, a nongovernment organisation
in the US, concluded in a report that Japan could save $32.6 billion ‘by
developing a 50-year, low-enriched or natural uranium reserve in place of
its commercial plutonium programme’. The Japanese national broadcasting
network, NHK, reported last week that Japan’s Atomic Energy Commission is
rethinking its plutonium programme.