Water from Fukushima to be spilt
TOKYO: Japan will release more than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear station into the sea, the Government said yesterday, a move opposed by neighbours including China, which called it ‘‘extremely irresponsible’’.
The first release of water will take place in about two years, giving plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) time to begin filtering the water to remove harmful isotopes and acquire regulatory approval.
Japan has argued the water release is necessary to press ahead with the complex decommissioning of the plant after it was crippled by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, pointing out similarly filtered water is routinely released from nuclear plants around the world.
Nearly 1.3 million tonnes of contaminated water is stored in huge tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant at an annual cost of about 100 billion yen ($NZ1.3 billion) and space is running out.
‘‘Releasing the . . . treated water is an unavoidable task to decommission the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and reconstruct the Fukushima area,’’ Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said of the process that will take decades to complete.
Tepco plans to filter the contaminated water to remove isotopes, leaving only tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen hard to separate from water. It will then dilute the water until tritium levels fall below regulatory limits, before pumping it into the ocean.
Tritium is considered relatively harmless because it does not emit enough energy to penetrate human skin. Other nuclear plants around the world routinely pump water with low levels of the isotope into the ocean.
The US Department of State noted Japan had worked closely with the International Atomic Energy Agency in its handling of the site and appeared to ‘‘have adopted an approach in accordance with globally accepted nuclear safety standards’’.
However, Japan’s neighbours were less positive and both China and South Korea called for more consultation.
‘‘This action is extremely irresponsible, and will seriously damage international public health and safety, and the vital interests of people in neighbouring countries,’’ China’s foreign ministry said.
South Korea was so concerned about the planned release of contaminated water it summoned Japanese ambassador Koichi Aiboshi yesterday, the YTN broadcaster reported.
Taiwan has also expressed concern.
Fishing unions in Fukushima have urged the Government for years not to release the water, arguing it would have a ‘‘catastrophic impact’’ on the industry.
A Scientific American article reported in 2014 that, when ingested, tritium could raise cancer risks, while some experts were worried about other contaminants. The water contained significant amounts of harmful isotopes despite years of treatment, Tepco said.
These were ‘‘of greater health risk than tritium and accumulate more readily in seafood and sea floor sediments’’, Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said.