“It’s like dumping an atomic bomb in the ocean. Japan is the first country that was attacked with an atomic bomb in the world, and the prime minister of the country made this decision,” said Kenichi Sato, 68.
China’s environment ministry on Thursday blasted Japan’s plan as “extremely selfish and irresponsible”, saying it would “track and study” the impact on its waters.
MULTIPLE MELTDOWNS
With around 1,000 steel containers holding the water, TEPCO has said it needs to clear space for the removal of highly dangerous radioactive nuclear fuel and rubble from the wrecked reactors.
Three of the reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi facility in northeastern Japan went into meltdown following a massive earthquake and tsunami that killed around 18,000 people in 2011.
Since then, TEPCO has collected 1.34 million cubic metres of water contaminated as it cooled the wrecked reactors, along with groundwater and rain that has seeped in.
TEPCO will carry out four releases of the treated water from Thursday until March 2024. The first discharge will take about 17 days.
About 5 trillion becquerels – a measure of radioactivity – of tritium will be released this fiscal year, TEPCO added.
Japan insists that all radioactive elements have been filtered out except the tritium, levels of which are harmless and lower than what is discharged by operational nuclear power plants, including in China.
This is backed by most experts.
“When released into the Pacific, the tritium is further diluted into a vast body of water and would quickly get to a radioactivity level which is not discernibly different from normal seawater,” said Tom Scott from the University of Bristol in England.
“Hence, it poses very little risk and the risk itself decreases with time due to the relatively short radioactive half-life… meaning that the amount of tritium (and hence the risk) continually reduces.”