2023-07-04 18:00:00
Shoko Oda and Isabel Reynolds
Hoy 15:00
Ethe japan plan to release treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear disaster meets global safety standards, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said following completing a two-year review.
The body considered that proposals for “graded and controlled releases of treated water” into the Pacific Ocean “would have negligible radiological impact on people and the environment”, said the director general, Rafael Grossi, in the foreword to a report delivered on Tuesday to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
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Los IAEA officials will continue to review the release of wastewater and will conduct live monitoring. The conclusion of the agency’s study will allow Japan “to make whatever decisions it wants to make to continue and move to the next phase,” Grossi said in his meeting with Kishida.
An assessment of the discharge facility by a national nuclear regulator is still required before a timetable is set to begin discharging the water, equivalent in volume to regarding 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Government officials have indicated that the downloads, which might take decades, would begin during the summer.
“I will not allow a process that harms people or the environment in Japan or around the world,” Kishida told reporters. “I will continue to provide detailed information at home and abroad, on a scientific basis and with a high degree of transparency.”
Chinese government criticism
The proposal, which has been strongly criticized by the Chinese government and has provoked public protests in South Korea, it also faces opposition from some local residents and members of Japan’s fishing industry.
China has once more urged Japan to stop the plan to dump the polluted water into the ocean, according to a Foreign Ministry statement sent Tuesday. China also expressed regret over the IAEA report endorsing the plan.
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Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant, Cycles with water to keep fuel and debris cold at the disaster site. That contaminated water is processed to remove most radioactive elements, except for tritium, which is more difficult to remove at low concentrations.
The liquid is currently stored in some 1,000 tanks and Tepco plans to further dilute the waste with seawater before releasing it offshore via an underground tunnel.. The Government of Japan and Tepco argue that the removal of the sewage and storage tanks is necessary to allow the complete decommissioning of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which suffered a meltdown in 2011.
“This process of dilution, and chemical filtering and of another kind, It is nothing new, it is something that exists in the industry”Grossi said at a separate briefing in Tokyo. Many countries release water containing certain radionuclides, including China, the US and South Korea, he said.
Japan sought IAEA endorsement to show that the plan conforms to decades of standard practice. The IAEA will work with Japan to offer guarantees to neighboring nations, according to Grossi, who confirmed that he had recently held talks in China.
“We recognize that there are concerns,” said Grossi, who is scheduled to hold talks starting Friday in South Korea with officials including Foreign Minister Park Jin.
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