Plutonium cache to be sent to US

Japan will send a huge cache of plutonium - enough to produce 50 nuclear bombs - to the United States as part of a deal to return the material that was used for research, reports and officials said on Tuesday.

The plutonium stockpile, provided by the US, Britain and France decades ago, has caused disquiet given that Japan has said it has the ability to produce a nuclear weapon even if it chooses not to.

About 331 kilograms of the material will be sent by ship to a nuclear facility in South Carolina by the end of March, Kyodo News reported on Monday, citing unnamed Japanese government sources.