Treated water at Fukushima plant still radioactive
TOKYO: The operator of Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant said that much of the radioactive water stored at the plant isn’t clean enough and needs further treatment if it is to be released into the ocean.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) and the government had said that treatment of the water had removed all radioactive elements except tritium, which experts say is safe in small amounts. They called it “tritium water”, but it actually wasn’t.
Tepco said on Friday that studies found the water still contains other elements, including radioactive iodine, cesium and strontium.
It said more than 80% of the 900,000 tonnes of water stored in large, densely packed tanks contains radioactivity exceeding limits for release into the environment.
Tepco general manager Junichi Matsumoto said radioactive ele- ments remained, especially earlier in the crisis when plant workers had to deal with large amounts of contaminated water leaking from the wrecked reactors and could not afford time to stop the treatment machines to change filters frequently.
“We had to prioritise processing large amounts of water as quickly as possible to reduce the overall risk,” Matsumoto said.
About 161,000 tonnes of the treated water has 10 to 100 times the limit for release into the environment, and another 65,200 tonnes has up to nearly 20,000 times the limit, Tepco said.
Matsumoto said the plant will treat the water further to ensure contamination levels are reduced to allowable limits.
He was responding to growing public criticism and distrust about the status of the water. — AP