Plan to flush nuke plant’s water into sea
TOKYO — The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant said Wednesday that it plans to build an undersea tunnel so that large amounts of treated but still radioactive water can be released into the ocean about half a mile away from the plant to avoid interference with fishing.
The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings, said that it hopes to start releasing the water in spring 2023. The utility says hundreds of storage tanks at the plant need to be removed to make room for facilities necessary for the plant’s decommissioning.
An official in charge of the water discharge project, Junichi Matsumoto, said the company will construct the undersea tunnel by drilling through bedrock in the seabed near its No. 5 reactor, which survived the meltdowns at the plant, to minimize possible underground contamination or leakage of radioactive ground water into the tunnel.
Increasing amounts of radioactive water have been stored in about 1,000 tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant since 2011, when a powerful earthquake and tsunami damaged three reactors and their cooling water became contaminated and began leaking. Plant officials said the tanks will reach their capacity late next year.
The government decided in April to start discharging the water, after further treatment and dilution, into the Pacific Ocean in spring 2023 under safety standards set by regulators. The idea has been fiercely opposed by fishermen, residents and neighboring countries including China and South Korea.
The offshore discharge using a pipeline enclosed inside a concrete tunnel is an attempt to minimize the “reputational damage” that would occur if the contaminated water is released close to marine life off the Fukushima coast.
Tokyo Electric Power plans to dilute the contaminated water with large amounts of seawater to reduce the concentration of radioactive materials below allowable limits. Japan has obtained the International Atomic Energy Agency’s agreement to cooperate in the water sampling and monitoring.