Japan will release more than a million tonnes of water into the sea this year from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Japan chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said, “We expect the timing of the release would be sometime during this spring or summer.” He said the government will wait for a “comprehensive report” from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) before the release.
The IAEA said the proposal is safe. Every day, the plant produces 100 cubic metres of contaminated water, which is a mixture of groundwater, seawater and water used to keep the reactors cool. It is then filtered and stored in tanks. With more than 1.3m cubic metres already on site, space is running out.
The water is filtered for most radioactive isotopes. After treatment the levels of most radioactive particles meet the national standard, but the level of tritium is above the national standard, the operator Tepco said. Experts said tritium is very difficult to remove from water and is only harmful to humans in large doses.
Neighbouring countries and local fishermen are opposing the proposal, which was approved by the Japanese government in 2021.
The Pacific Islands Forum has also criticised Japan for the lack of transparency. Forum secretary general Henry Puma said, “Pacific peoples are coastal peoples, and the ocean continues to be an integral part of their subsistence living. Japan is breaking the commitment that their leaders arrived at when we held our high level summit in 2021.
“It was agreed that we would have access to all independent scientific and verifiable scientific evidence before this discharge takes place. Unfortunately, Japan has not been co-operating.”
North-eastern Japan was rocked by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake on 11 March 2011, which then triggered a giant tsunami. The waves hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, flooding three reactors and sparking a major disaster. The 2011 Fukushima disaster was the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. M