The MOX fuel, which comes from a Belgian subsidiary of French-state nuclear re-processing firm Cogema, will leave on two ships, the "Pacific Teal" and "Pacific Pintail", Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (TEPCO) said in a statement.

Environmental group Greenpeace has protested against the shipment, saying the fuel contains enough plutonium to make 20 atomic bombs and poses a threat to the environment because of the potential for accidents at sea. It warned coastal nations this week to be on alert.

It will be the second nuclear shipment to leave from Cherbourg. The British-owned "Pacific Swan", which left the French Port on December 19, is scheduled to dock in Aomori in northern Japan in February, carrying a cargo of nuclear waste. A TEPCO spokesman said the shipping routes for the "PacificTeal" and "Pacific Pintail" will be disclosed a day after they leave Cherbourg.

The first shipment of MOX to Japan, in 1999, created a furore after its supplier, state-owned British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL), was found to have falsified data about the fuel, forcing Japan to postpone plans to begin using MOX from that year. The latest shipment is bound for a reactor at a TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, in Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast, although TEPCO has not yet announced when it will begin using MOX at the Niigata plant.

MOX is mixture of uranium and plutonium oxide, that results from the recycling of spent nuclear fuels. Resource-poor Japan finds it attractive, because it provides a means of using the plutonium that accumulates from spent nuclear fuel. But critics say MOX is more expensive than traditional fuels, namely uranium, and requires modifications to existing nuclear power stations.

(Reuters)