2023-08-24 17:26:41
Japan has started dumping water from its damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea, despite opposition from Beijing.
Japan began on Thursday to discharge water from its damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea, despite the concerns of its fishermen and an strong opposition from Beijing. China, first export market for Japanese fishing, denounced a “selfish and irresponsible” action and suspended all imports of Japanese seafood products, citing “food safety”.
The discharge into the Pacific Ocean of water from Fukushima was initiated shortly following 6 a.m. this morning by Tepco, the operator of the plant. This first spill is expected to last regarding 17 days and cover some 7,800 m³ of water containing tritium, a radioactive substance that is only dangerous in highly concentrated doses. Tepco plans three more spills by the end of March next, for equivalent volumes.
In total, Japan plans to evacuate more than 1.3 million m³ of wastewater stored until now on the site of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, coming from rainwater, groundwater and the injections necessary to cool the cores of the reactors that went into meltdown following the March 2011 tsunami which devastated the north coast – east of the country.
Filtered water and a progressive process
This process will be very gradual – it should last until the 2050s – and the content of tritiated water in the daily discharges into the sea will not exceed 500 m³. The water has been filtered beforehand to rid it of most of its radioactive substances, with the exception of tritium. This water discharged into the ocean has a level of radioactivity 40 times lower than the international standard for tritiated water and seven times lower than the ceiling established by the World Health Organization (WHO) for drinking water.
Discharge of tritiated water into the sea is common practice in the nuclear industry worldwide.
Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is overseeing the operation, took samples of the water prepared for the first spill and independently analyzedsaid the UN body.
Discharge of tritiated water into the sea is a common practice in the nuclear industry around the world and the annual level of radioactivity from these releases by Chinese nuclear power plants is much higher than that expected at Fukushima Daiichi, Tokyo noted.
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