Japan, France, West Germany and Britain have or are building plants to reprocess spent nuclear reactor fuel to produce plutonium, which then is used in specially designed reactors.
Thousands of demonstrators linked hands Sunday in an attempt to form a human chain around a northern Japan site where the government is constructing a plant to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
First, they said, the pact gives Japan advance U.S. consent for 30 years to reprocess and use American plutonium in any Japanese facility without restriction on the amount or the purpose.