THIS morning, the Akatsuki Maru, carrying 1.7 tonnes of reprocessed plutonium, is due quietly to enter Tokai port in Ibaraki prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, after its long, controversial journey through the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans from France.
Quietly, that is, unless the Japanese branch of the Greenpeace environmental movement, or Japanese anti-nuclear activists, are able to stage an incident. This seems unlikely, although the more numerous foreign demonstrators may be more successful.
All aircraft have been ordered to keep out of Tokai's airspace. Tokai port is used exclusively by the Japan Atomic Power Company (JAPC). The plutonium will move from the Akatsuki Maru to the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC)reprocessing plant through well-guarded JAPC and PNC installations.
JAPC and PNC, plus the Japanese Science and Technology Agency (JSTA), the Transport Ministry and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) would like nothing better than for the whole plutonium project to revert to obscurity.
In much of the world outside Japan, the voyage of the Akatsuki Maru ranked with the Sagawa Kyubin political scandal, and Emperor Akihito's visit to China as the main Japanese news story of 1992. Inside Japan the story ran way behind Mamoru Mori becoming Japan's first astronaut, Japan capturing seven medals at the Winter Olympic Games, and a film-maker being attacked by the yakuza.
In a poll of 11,852 readers of Japan's largest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, the plutonium saga ranked a mere 20th, and only reached that position because the voyage of the Akatsuki Maru had received worldwide attention.