Nuclear warhead would take Japan 3-5 yrs -report

TOKYO, Dec 25 (Reuters) Japan would need at least three to five years to test-manufacture a nuclear warhead, a Japanese newspaper said today, quoting an internal government report.

The report, by experts at a government body, said that while Japan had uranium enrichment plants and the capability and facilities to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, it lacked technology to swiftly convert those resources to a weapon, the Sankei Shimbun said.

Fuel currently on hand is suited for a light-water reactor but not for a weapon, and Japan would need to build a graphite-moderated reactor to produce plutonium 239 efficiently as well as a means to reprocess spent fuel from that reactor, the report was quoted as saying.

Academics have said that Japan could make a nuclear device in half a year, or according to some, as little as two months.

The internal report was compiled on September 20, the Sankei said, which was before North Korea conducted its first-ever nuclear test on October 9.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, the top government spokesman, said he was surprised to read the newspaper report.

''I am not aware of what was reported,'' he told a news conference.

Japan officially interprets its pacifist constitution as allowing the possession of small nuclear weapons for defensive purposes, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has repeatedly said Japan would stick to its ban on nuclear arms.

Public opposition to holding nuclear arms runs high in the only nation to have suffered nuclear attacks.

Reuters DKA DB1057