A Japanese Yakuza leader pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to attempting to traffic military-grade weapons and about 500 kilograms of narcotics. These charges alone will put someone away for quite a long time – add on a conviction for trying to offload thousands of kilos of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, and it’s unlikely that Takeshi Ebisawa will ever leave prison.
It’s hard to pick the most damning evidence found in the… Court files from the Ministry of Justice. There is a photo from an undercover agent of Ebisawa brandishing a stolen US Army rocket launcher. There is also a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation between Ebisawa and a co-conspirator with images of lab-confirmed heroin, with the co-conspirator asking, “Are these the right packages? [sic] did you give to my boys? followed by Ebisawa replying, “Yes.” Then there’s the sound of the Yakuza boss discussing the sale of nuclear weapons materials with an undercover agent he thought was a general in the Iranian army.
“Ebisawa was introduced unconsciously [agents]… to Ebisawa’s international network of criminal associates, which included Japan, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and the United States, for the purpose of arranging large-scale transactions in narcotics and weapons,” the DOJ said on January 7 announcement explains. If completed, these sales would have helped finance and supply multiple armed militant groups in Burma, as well as the distribution of drugs such as methamphetamine and heroin throughout New York.
Aside from the narcotics and stolen ammunition, Ebisawa allegedly worked for years to facilitate deals involving “a large amount of nuclear material,” the DOJ said. To prove he possessed them, the Yakuza leader offered undercover authorities several photos of “rocky substances” next to Geiger counters showing their radiation levels. These were accompanied by so-called paper documents showing that thorium and uranium were involved. During subsequent meetings with undercover agents, Ebisawa later offered 220 pounds of uranium concentrate powder – commonly referred to as “Yellowcake” – for sale. He also told an agent posing as an Iranian general that he could supply him with “better” and “more powerful” plutonium for the country’s nuclear weapons program.
Ebisawa was not wrong about the plutonium from a technical point of view. Modern thermonuclear weapons rely on what is called a plutonium pit. This core component contains a gas such as deuterium and tritium that is encapsulated in chemical explosives. Once detonated, the explosives condense the plutonium around the box so intensely that it causes a fission reaction. The transition from the designation “atomic” to “thermonuclear” occurs when the uranium core of a warhead comes together to generate a fusion reaction. This crucial detail is what boosts a weapon of mass destruction on the order of a few tens of kilotons to something like this Bravo Castlethe first US thermonuclear bomb test. Although initially estimated in 1959 to generate an explosion equivalent to six megatons of TNT, the device produced a 15-megaton explosion – reportedly the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated by the US.
Ebisawa’s access to plutonium went beyond its potential for destruction. Plutonium is much rarer in nature than uranium, meaning it generally requires sophisticated and expensive laboratory and production facilities. By purchasing the product directly, bad actors could probably have skipped more than a few steps and saved quite a bit of money at the same time. According to court documents, a nuclear forensic laboratory confirmed that Ebisawa’s plutonium was weapons material “suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.”
Ebisawa pleaded guilty to a total of six charges: conspiracy to commit international trafficking in nuclear materials, two counts of conspiracy to import narcotics, conspiracy to possess firearms and money laundering .
Convictions for trafficking in nuclear materials are relatively rare, given the strict regulations in the sector. The International Atomic Energy Agency mentions only 4,243 incidents involving the illegal handling of nuclear materials since 1993. However, of these, only eight percent are estimated to have involved “trafficking or malicious use.”
Win the holidays with PopSci’s gift guides
