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On Friday, media reports said that almost a decade after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the Japanese government decided to release the contaminated water from the destroyed plant into the sea, and an official announcement is expected later this month.
The decision is expected to upset neighboring countries like South Korea, which has already stepped up radiation testing of food from Japan, and the move will also destroy Fukushima’s fishing industry, which it has been fighting for years.
Disposal of contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has long been a problem for Japan as it pursues a decades-long decommissioning project. Currently, more than a million tons of contaminated water is stored in huge tanks at the facility.
The plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Corporation, suffered several nuclear collapses after the 2011 Tsumani earthquake.
Japan’s Industry Minister Hiroshi Kagiyama said on Friday that a decision had not yet been made on the elimination of the water, but that the government was aiming for a swift decision.
“To avoid any delay in the decommissioning process, we must make a decision quickly,” he told a news conference.
He gave no further details, including a deadline.
For its part, the newspaper “Asahi” reported that any such release is expected to take around two years to prepare, as the water irradiated at the site must first go through a filtration process before being diluted with seawater. and finally release into the ocean.
In 2018, Tokyo Electric Power Corporation apologized after admitting that its filtration systems had not removed all hazardous materials from the water, which had been collected from the cooling pipes used to prevent fuel from melting when the plant failed.
He said he plans to remove all radioactive particles from the water except for tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is difficult to separate and is considered relatively harmless.
Last week, representatives of the Japanese fishing industry urged the government not to allow contaminated water from the Fukushima plant to seep into the sea, saying it would end years of work to restore its reputation.
South Korea has maintained a ban on imports of seafood from the Fukushima region, imposed after the nuclear disaster, and convened a senior official at the Japanese embassy last year to explain how Tokyo planned to deal with the water problem. of Fukushima.
During Tokyo’s bid to host the 2013 Olympics, then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told members of the International Olympic Committee that the Fukushima facilities were “under control.”
The Olympic Games were postponed until 2021, due to the repercussions of the Crown epidemic, as some sporting events were scheduled to take place at a distance of 60 km from the destroyed station.
