The Japanese government has decided to release treated radioactive water that has been accumulating at the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean a decision that has angered neighbouring countries, including China and South Korea and local fishermen.
The government will hold a meeting of related ministers as early as this week to formally decide on the plan, a major development following over seven years of discussions on how to discharge the water used to cool down melted fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Prime minister Yoshihide Suga said in a meeting of ministers on Tuesday that the government had decided that releasing the water into the Pacific Ocean was the “most realistic” option, and “unavoidable in order to achieve Fukushima’s recovery”. The government has said it cannot continue postponing the decision on the disposal issue, given that the storage capacity of water tanks at the Fukushima complex is expected to run out as early as next year.
The water has been treated using an advanced liquid processing system to remove all contaminants below environmental levels and stored in tanks on the complex premises. However, the processing system cannot remove tritium, the least radioactive, and least harmful, of all radioactive elements.
Work to release the diluted water will begin in about two years, the government said, with the entire process expected to take decades.
“On the premise of strict compliance with regulatory standards that have been established, we select oceanic release,” it said in a statement.
The Fukushima crisis was set off in March 2011 by a huge earthquake and tsunami that ripped through northeastern Japan and killed more than 19,000 people. The subsequent meltdown of three of the plant’s six reactors was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Tens of thousands of people fled the area around the plant or were evacuated, in many cases never to return.
Ten years later, the cleanup is far from finished at the disabled plant, which is operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company.
