THE WISDOM of public cautioning does work sometimes. Japan recently decided to gear down its controversial fast-breeder reactor programme, dogged by doomsayers both within the country and without.

In its bid to make the country less dependent on oil imports, the Japanese government had come up with a plan to replace its conventional nuclear reactors, which now provide most of Japan's energy, with fast-breeder reactors that can re-use plutonium.

The international community, chary of promises of pacifism and with World War II as a backdrop, feels that Japan is treading dangerous ground. Critics warn that it fast-breeder reactors will create surplus plutonium that could well be used to produce weapons on the sly.

The Diet, the Japanese parliament, was itself sharply divided on the issue. Some parties in the 7-party coalition ministry vehemently rooted for the dismantling of the fast-breeder reactor programme, while others -- like the revivalist Japan Renewal Party -- were in favour of continuing it, and damn the consequences.

Japanese prime minister Morihiro Hosakawa seems to have opted for a compromise -- slowing down but not scuttling the plutonium-based programme. The country's Science and Technology Agency (STA) is rescheduling its plans to achieve self-sufficiency in the processing of spent reactor fuel, which yields plutonium as a by-product. While the reprocessing plant currently under construction at Rokkasho-mura in the Aomori prefecture will begin operating by 2002, the second unit that was to start functioning by 2010 will not be ready till 2030.

Hosakawa is obviously keen to avoid any further controversies. He has appointed as director-general of STA one of his relatively non-controversial colleagues, Satsuki Eda, a moderate Left-winger who heads the United Socialist Democratic Federation.

On his part, Eda has hastened to dispel the misgivings of the international community. "We must reduce our dependence on imported oil," he told the Far Eastern Economic Review. "But at the same time, we must avoid becoming obsessed with nuclear power."