A vessel under armed guard and loaded with reprocessed nuclear fuel from France arrived at a Japanese port on Thursday, an AFP journalist said, despite nearly all of the country's reactors being shut down.
The cargo of mixed oxide (MOX), a blend of plutonium and uranium, was the first such nuclear fuel to arrive in Japan since the atomic disaster at Fukushima, which was sparked by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011.
The fuel left the French port of Cherbourg in mid April bound for Japan, French nuclear group Areva has said. The vessel was specially fitted to be able to transport nuclear material and was escorted by an armed sister ship. Its route was not fully disclosed.
Anti-nuclear activists and residents have said they were planning a protest rally at breakwaters near a port in Takahama town on the eastern coast of central Japan, home to the Takahama nuclear plant, the final destination for the MOX.
Japan has few energy resources of its own and relied on nuclear power for nearly one-third of its domestic electricity needs until the meltdowns at Fukushima.
All but two of the country's 50 nuclear reactors are offline, shuttered for routine safety checks in the aftermath of the disaster and never restarted because of public resistance and new standards.
Uranium reactors produce a mixture of depleted uranium and plutonium as a by-product of fission. These can be re-processed into MOX fuel, which can then be used in other reactors to generate more power.
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