Japan plans to release into the sea more than a million tonnes of radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear station, it said on Tuesday. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc (Tepco) will begun pumping out water in about two years after treatment.
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The Japanese government has officially announced that it will begin releasing its treated radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean starting 2023.
Marking a little over a decade since the nuclear disaster occurred, the 1.25 million metric tons of treated radioactive water was a result of the water pumped in to cool the melting reactor and is combined with contaminated rain and groundwater. The water was treated using ALPS (advanced liquid processing system) where radioactive materials like strontium and cesium were removed, leaving behind tritium.
As for the tritiated water, it will be diluted to 1,500 becquerels per liter, which is roughly 1/40th of the permitted concentrations in Japanese drinking water, or 1/7th that of the World Health Organization’s guidelines for acceptable drinking water.
The Japanese utility giant Tepco is planning to dump more than 1 million cubic meters of treated radioactive water enough to fill 500 Olympic-size swimming pools from the wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean, part of its nearly $200 billion effort to clean up the worst atomic accident since Chernobyl. Storage tanks at the site are forecast to be full by mid-2022, and space for building more is scarce. Scary as it sounds, discharges are common practice in th
The Japanese government says there will be no negative effects on humans or the environment, although local fishermen and neighbouring countries have raised concerns.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said on April 13 it supports Japan s decision to release treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea and stands ready to provide technical assistance in monitoring the discharge.