On Thursday, Japan began releasing contaminated water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean, and China instituted a ban on Japan’s seafood.
The Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station was knocked out by a massive earthquake and tsunami that killed around 18,000 people in March 2011, sending three of its reactors into meltdown.
Since that time, TEPCO, the operators of the plant has collected 1.34 million cubic meters of water — almost 540 Olympic swimming pools’ worth — used to cool what remains of the still highly radioactive reactors, mixed with groundwater and rain.
But since the initial disaster in 2011, Japan has worked to get the crippled power plant decommissioned, and one of the issues is all that contaminated water. TEPCO came up with a plan that involved saving all the water and then treating it to remove radioactive elements.
TEPCO insists that all radioactive elements have been filtered out except tritium, levels of which are harmless and lower than those discharged by operational nuclear power plants, including in China.
The plan for releasing the wastewater involves diluting a cubic meter of the wastewater with around 1,200 cubic meters of seawater and allowing it to flow into position in a pipe and be released into the Pacific Ocean. The whole process is going to take several decades to complete.
TEPCO plans to release 31,200 tons of the treated water by the end of March 2024, which would empty only 10 tanks because of the contaminated production of wastewater at the plant, though the pace will later pick up.
Now that the release of the wastewater has started, Japan will have to put up with a boycott of its seafood from China, and numerous outbursts on social media.
The Japanese government has taken steps to appeal to neighboring countries that have expressed concerns about the safety of the plan, as well as to the Japanese fishing community that has expressed concern about the economic impact on the industry.
Fukushima’s current fish catch is only about one-fifth of its pre-disaster level, in part due to a decline in the fishing population. China has tightened radiation testing on Japanese products from Fukushima and nine other prefectures, halting exports at customs for weeks, Fisheries Agency officials said.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged that “the government will take responsibility until the disposal of ALPS-treated water is completed, even if it takes several decades.”
