The World - News from Nov. 5, 1987

The United States and Japan signed a 30-year nuclear cooperation pact that gives Japan more autonomy in some areas of its nuclear energy program. The agreement allows Japan to transfer spent U.S.-supplied nuclear fuel to reprocessing plants in Britain and France without specific U.S. permission, as an old pact had required. It also allows Japan to transfer such materials, including plutonium, back to Japan by air using a polar route, a provision opposed by the governor of Alaska and nuclear watchdog groups.