Japan will seek a nuclear energy pact with the United States that renews automatically while it continues reprocessing spent fuel and enriching uranium, government sources said Tuesday.
The government plans to forgo a long-term pact similar to the 30-year bilateral agreement that expires in July next year, according to the source. Officials want the new type of agreement because they have little time for talks amid vacancies in U.S. departments tasked with negotiations under President Donald Trump's administration, the sources said.
Furthermore, the government apparently wants to avoid facing potentially harsh demands from Washington over such matters as the large stockpiles of plutonium that have built up over years of reprocessing under the current pact. The plutonium can be used to produce nuclear weapons, posing a potential proliferation risk, which worries Washington.