Japan: IAEA in Fukushima to assess plan for discharging contaminated water into the sea
Some 1.27 million tonnes of contaminated water are stored in more than a thousand cisterns at the Fukushima plant site.
AP - Tomohiro Ohsumi
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Japan has decided to discharge more than a million tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean following the Fukushima nuclear accident.
The operation is due to begin in 2023 under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
A delegation from the Vienna agency arrived in Tokyo to assess their spill plan with the Japanese authorities.
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With our correspondent in Tokyo,
Frédéric Charles
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has included Chinese and South Korean experts in the working group responsible for verifying the transparency and security of the Japanese project.
Japan will discharge into the Pacific Ocean more than one million tons of water resulting from the cooling of the damaged reactors of the Fukushima power plant and from the groundwater which infiltrates in the basements of the buildings of the reactors.
The water will be conveyed by means of an underwater pipe
2.5 m in diameter extending about a kilometer into the ocean, operator Tepco announced at the end of August, specifying that its construction should start by next March.
Tritium impossible to eliminate
Every day, the volume of this water increases by about 140 tons.
Reprocessing systems make it possible to eliminate all the radionuclides it contains, except one: tritium.
The agency in Vienna wants to ensure that the filtered water will be diluted so that the level of tritium it contains is lowered.
►Also read: Japan: ten years after the nuclear accident, Fukushima is still struggling to recover
Japan promises to reject treated water from 2023 very gradually: in thirty or forty years, the expected duration of the dismantling of the plant.
A common practice
The Vienna agency explains that power stations in most other countries discharge water loaded with tritium into the sea or into rivers every week.
China, Taiwan, South Korea also dump it but criticize the Japanese decision.
At the Fukushima plant, the water storage capacities in more than a thousand reservoirs will reach their limit.
The operator Tepco spends nearly 800 million euros each year to maintain and monitor water storage.
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Japan
Fukushima
Environment
Pollution
Nuclear