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Japan will release more than one million tons of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea in a decades-long operation, reportedly despite strong opposition from local fishermen.
The release of the water, which has been filtered to reduce radioactivity, is likely to begin in 2022 at the earliest, national newspapers Nikkei, Yomiuri and other local media said.
The decision ends years of debate over how to dispose of the liquid that includes the water used to cool the power plant after it was hit by a massive tsunami in 2011.
A government panel said earlier this year that releasing the water into the sea or evaporating it were “realistic options.”
“We cannot postpone a decision on the plan to deal with … processed water, to avoid delays in the decommissioning work of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said on Friday. without commenting directly on the plan or its timing.
There is around 1.23 million tonnes of wastewater stored in tanks at the facility, according to plant operator TEPCO, which also declined to comment on the reports.
Environmental activists have voiced strong opposition to the proposals, and fishermen and farmers have expressed fear that consumers will avoid seafood and products from the region.
South Korea, which bans imports of seafood from the area, has also repeatedly raised concerns about the environmental impact.
The decision is becoming urgent as the space to store the water, which also includes groundwater and the rain that seeps into the plant daily, is running out.
Most of the radioactive isotopes have been removed through an extensive filtration process, but one remains, called tritium, that cannot be removed with existing technology.
The panel of experts reported in January that dumping the water into the sea was a viable option because the method is also used in working nuclear reactors.
Tritium is only harmful to humans in very large doses, experts say. The International Atomic Energy Agency argues that properly filtered water could be diluted with seawater and then safely released into the ocean.
The Yomiuri reported that the water would be diluted within the facility prior to its launch, and that the entire process would take 30 years.
Treated water is currently held in a thousand huge tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi site, where the reactors collapsed nearly a decade ago after the earthquake-triggered tsunami.
Plant operator TEPCO is building more tanks, but they will all be full by mid-2022.
kh / kaf / gle
