TOKYO, August 23 ------ Japan will release water from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean from Thursday, 12 years after the East Asian country experienced one of the world's worst nuclear disasters. Japan insists that the gradual discharge of the more than 500 Olympic swimming pools' worth of water from the site in northeastern Japan, announced by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, is safe. The atomic facility was knocked out by the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that killed about 18,000 people on March 11, 2011, sending three of its reactors into meltdown.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) has since collected 1.34 million tons of water used to cool what remains of the still highly radioactive reactors, mixed with groundwater and rain that has seeped in. Tepco says the water will be diluted and filtered before its release to remove all radioactive substances except tritium, levels of which are far below dangerous levels. "Tritium has been released (by nuclear power plants) for decades with no evidential detrimental environmental or health effects," Tony Hooker, a nuclear expert from the University of Adelaide, told Agence France-Presse (AFP). This water will be released into the ocean off Japan's northeast coast at a maximum rate of 500,000 liters (132,000 gallons) a day.
The United Nations' atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a report in July the release would have a "negligible radiological impact on people and the environment." On Tuesday, the IAEA said its staff would be on site for the start of the discharge and beyond, and would publish "real-time and near real-time monitoring data."
Japan's fisheries agency will take samples of bottom-dwelling flatfish at two designated sampling spots near the outlet of the water pipe. But Greenpeace has said the filtration process is flawed. Japan "has opted for a false solution decades of deliberate radioactive pollution of the marine environment during a time when the world's oceans are already facing immense stress and pressures," the environmental pressure group said on Tuesday. Many South Koreans are alarmed at the prospect of the release, staging demonstrations and even stocking up on sea salt because of fears of contamination. Dozens of protesters gathered in front of the Japanese embassy in the South's capital Seoul on Tuesday, with more rallies planned. But President Yoon Suk Yeol's government, taking political risks at home, has sought to improve long-frosty relations with Japan and has not objected to the plan.
Yoon held a first-ever trilateral summit with Kishida and US President Joe Biden at Camp David in Maryland last week, the three united by worries about China and North Korea. China has accused Japan of treating the ocean like a "sewer," banning imports of food from 10 Japanese prefectures even before the release and imposing strict radiation checks.
In Hong Kong, a major market for Japanese seafood exports, Chief Executive John Lee called the discharge "irresponsible" and instructed authorities on Tuesday to "immediately activate... import control measures to protect food safety and public health." The threat of restrictions worries people in Japan's fishing industry, just as business was beginning to recover. "Nothing about the water release is beneficial to us," third-generation fisherman Haruo Ono, 71, whose brother was killed in 2011, told AFP in Fukushima prefecture's Shinchimachi town, 60 kilometers (40 miles) north of the nuclear plant.
Source: manilatimes.com
Comments