FUKUSHIMA: Final preparations to release wastewater from Japan’s crippled Fukushima plant began Wednesday, its operator said, a day before it was scheduled to be released into the Pacific Ocean.
Tokyo announced on Tuesday that the Pacific operation would begin on Thursday, prompting an angry response from China and partial bans on Japanese seafood imports from Hong Kong and Macau.
The plant’s operator, TEPCO, said on Tuesday that a cubic meter of wastewater diluted about 1,200 cubic meters of seawater and allowed it to drain into a pipe.
This water will be tested and then released into the sea from Thursday, along with other water stored on site, which will be transferred and diluted, TEPCO said in a statement.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was shut down by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 that killed around 18,000 people and caused three of its reactors to collapse.
TEPCO has since amassed 1.34 million cubic meters of water – nearly 540 Olympic-sized swimming pools – used to cool still-highly radioactive reactor debris mixed with groundwater and rain.
The special system filtered out all radioactive nuclides except tritium, whose levels will be completely within safe limits, according to TEPCO.
The release was approved by the U.N.’s atomic watchdog, which said it would have personnel in place on Thursday to begin the release, which is expected to take decades to complete.
China has already accused Japan of treating the ocean like “sewage”, banned food imports from 10 of Japan’s 47 prefectures before the release and imposed strict radiation controls.
China summoned the Japanese ambassador on Tuesday to “make a solemn statement” while Hong Kong and Macau, both Chinese territories, announced bans on imports of “aquatic products” from the same 10 regions.
Analysts said that while China may have genuine security concerns, its strong response is also at least partly motivated by its economic rivalry and frosty relationship with Japan.
