CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida More than eight years ago, hundreds of protesters chanted anti-nuclear slogans before NASA launched a spacecraft to Saturn carrying 33 kilos (72 pounds) of plutonium fuel. The noise before this week's launch of a craft with a similar payload has been more muted.

Only 30 anti-nuclear protesters showed up recently to oppose a plutonium-fueled mission to Pluto. The most raucous it got was when protesters tied colorful origami birds to the fence of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

"Folks tend to forget," said protest organizer Maria Telesca of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

But Telesca and other protesters said the threat of a nuclear accident is no less real with the New Horizons mission to Pluto than it was with the launch of Cassini to Saturn in 1997.