With plutonium no longer needed for use in the world's abandoned fast breeder reactor programmes and nuclear powers getting rid of their atomic weapons, large stockpiles of the highly toxic plutonium metal are starting to build up.

BBC: More suspect nuclear fuel found

In December 1995, the Monju fast-breeder reactor at Tsuruga sprang a leak in its sodium-cooling circuitry.

ECONOMIST: Japan

The latter elements would be destroyed in a fast-burner reactor.

FORBES: U.S. nuclear fuel rods to sit in pools -- like those that failed in Japan -- until 2050

In the 1970s and 1980s the federal government poured billions of dollars into the Synthetic Fuels Corporation to develop liquid and gas fuel from coal, and into the fast-breeder nuclear reactor.

ECONOMIST: How the government can help things along

And the fast-breeder type of nuclear reactor in which plutonium was used as fuel is no longer economic.

ECONOMIST: The nuclear industry

We are advising, based on new information in a deteriorating and fast-moving situation at a nuclear reactor site in Japan, that American citizens within a 50-mile radius of that plant should evacuate beyond the 50-mile mark.

WHITEHOUSE: Press Briefing