Japan suspends Fukushima water release after quake as precaution

TOKYO: The release of wastewater from Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant was suspended on Friday ( Mar 15 ) following an earthquake, its operator said while stressing that the move was precautionary.

A 5.8- scale shock struck off the coastline of the northern Fukushima area, home to the shrub wrecked by a storm in 2011, at 12.14am on Friday ( 3.14pm GMT, Thursday ), the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

” We have confirmed electronically that there were no defects on ALPS treated water dilution/discharge service, etc. “, Tokyo Electric Power Company ( TEPCO ) said on X, formerly Twitter, referring to the water release process.

However, it stated that” to be on the safe side, we have suspended the operation of the features in accordance with the pre-defined operational techniques.”

No abnormalities were found at either the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant or its sister grow Fukushima Daini, according to Japan’s nuclear regulatory power immediately after the earthquake.

Since the 2011 earthquake, one of the worst nuclear disasters in the world, TEPCO started releasing waste from about 540 Olympian swimming pools into the Pacific last August.

The UN nuclear agency has approved the activity, and TEPCO claims that all nuclear elements, with the exception of tritium, have been filtered out. The levels of which are within safe parameters.

However, China and Russia have criticized the launch into the Pacific Ocean and imposed a ban on imports of Chinese seafood, alleging that Japan is polluting the atmosphere.

Every year, there are hundreds of earthquakes in Japan, and the majority of them do n’t cause any harm.

There were no reports of accidents from the most recent quake, and there was no storm notice.