Japan will begin releasing treated radioactive wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean this week, its government said on Tuesday, setting aside regional and domestic objections as it moves to eventually discharge over a million tons of the water into the sea.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made the announcement after a meeting of his cabinet, saying the release would begin on Thursday if weather and ocean conditions allowed.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in July that the government’s plan met the agency’s safety standards, and it has said that releasing the treated water is not likely to pose a serious health threat to humans.
But some scientists have raised questions about whether the Japanese government and the company that operated the plant, Tokyo Electric Power, have been sufficiently forthcoming about what radioactive material may remain in the holding tanks.
The Chinese government has opposed the plan, as has a large segment of the South Korean public. Fishing groups and others in Japan have also expressed opposition.
Mr. Kishida visited the wrecked nuclear plant on Sunday and met with leaders of the Japanese fishery industry in Tokyo on Monday, vowing to ensure that fishermen can continue to make a living after the release.
Masanobu Sakamoto, head of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, said that while many of his group’s members had come to accept the government’s assurances on the safety of the discharge, it remained opposed because of the potential effects on fishermen’s livelihoods.
Since an earthquake and tsunami triggered a triple meltdown in Fukushima in 2011, the question of what to do with the accumulating tons of water used to cool nuclear fuel rods has been one of the biggest challenges facing both the government and Tokyo Electric.
For Japan, it is as much a political problem as it is an engineering or environmental one. Despite the determination by the international agency that it was safe to release the water, opponents at home and in neighboring countries have questioned both the government and the agency’s motives. When Japan’s cabinet approved the treated-water plan in 2021, it described the controlled ocean release as the best available disposal option.
People’s Daily, a state media organization owned by the Communist Party in China, has referred to the treated water as Japan’s “nuclear sewage.” And in South Korea, where seafood imports from waters near Fukushima are still banned, an opposition lawmaker warned that “no one can tell or predict for sure what the discharging of radioactive materials into the sea over an extended period of time will bring about.”
In Japan, both Fukushima and national fisheries associations have said they fear that once Tokyo Electric starts releasing the water, both domestic and international customers may be reluctant to eat fish from the region.
Although it has been a dozen years since the worst…
2023-08-21 21:37:48
Article from www.nytimes.com