A stockpile of plutonium currently in Japanese possession, will be shipped to the United States by the end of March, according to media reports that are touting the shipment as a gesture of non-proliferation goodwill.
Japan has about 331 kilograms of plutonium that it will ship to a nuclear facility in South Carolina using a route and departure date that it is keeping under wraps for security purposes.
The cache of plutonium is large enough to produce 50 nuclear bombs, which Japanese law forbids. Although the country allows the United States to cross its territorial waters with nuclear weapons, construction of a nuclear weapon, despite Japan claiming it has the know-how to do, is not allowed in Japan, the only country that has experienced the devastation of nuclear weaponry.
The shipment of plutonium, which was used by the Nuclear Science Research Institute northeast of Tokyo for experiments pertaining to nuclear energy for civil purposes, complies with a 2014 agreement with the United States. It is also being touted as symbolic of non-proliferation cooperation, given it will coincide with a nuclear security summit in Washington that will take place in March.