Japan to turn over nuclear material to US for destruction

Japan will hand over "hundreds of kilograms of sensitive nuclear material" to the US for destruction as part of the efforts to "help prevent unauthorised actors, criminals, or terrorists from acquiring such materials," the White House said Monday.

At the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, the Netherlands, US President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged to remove and dispose all highly- enriched uranium (HEU) and separated plutonium stored at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA)'s Fast Critical Assembly, Xinhua quoted the White House as saying in a statement.

"This material, once securely transported to the United States, will be sent to a secure facility and fully converted into less sensitive forms," it said.

"The plutonium will be prepared for final disposition. The HEU will be downblended to low enriched uranium (LEU) and utilised for civilian purposes."

The White House said the Fast Critical Assembly in Japan came online in 1967 for the purpose of studying the physics characteristics of fast reactor cores.