The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency today submitted an assessment giving Tokyo the green light to proceed with the project. He will also visit South Korea in the next few days. The government led by Fumio Kishida has not announced a start date. Immediate protests from the Chinese ambassador to Japan and Korean officials.
Tokyo ( / Agencies) – The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has declared that Japan’s plan to dump partially radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean complies with world safety standards, despite from the opposition of neighboring countries.
This was stated by the director general of the UN agency, Rafael Grossi, who presented today in the capital, Tokyo, the organization’s final report to the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida. According to the report’s conclusions, the water spill would have “a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment,” added Grossi, who stressed that Japan has all the paperwork in order to “go to the next phase.”
“Japan will continue to explain to the Japanese people and the international community in a sincere manner, based on scientific evidence and with high levels of transparency,” Kishida said. Tokyo has not yet set a date to start discharging the waters, but the prime minister announced he will review the IAEA’s assessment before deciding when to proceed with the project, according to which the waters, after being diluted through advanced liquid treatment system, will be released into the sea through an underwater tunnel.
The water is contaminated with tritium, an element that cannot be removed, and is currently stored in tanks inside the Fukushima nuclear power plant, badly damaged in the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Even today, the nuclear reactor still needs cooling: for this, additional water is drawn from the ocean, which continues to accumulate in the tanks. According to the company that operates the plant, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the space available in the tanks is running out.
Grossi will stay in Japan for two more days, during which he will meet with local fishermen (concerned about the negative impact on the reputation of their products) and will open a new IAEA office in Fukushima. This will serve to supervise the release process “permanently” and “for decades.” Over the weekend, the UN official will travel to South Korea – one of the countries that has most opposed the Japanese plan – “to provide answers”, acknowledging the fears of other nations in the region. However, Grossi continued, it is not his job to convince local governments to support Japan’s decision.
The Japanese plan, which should be operational by the summer once it gets final approval from TEPCO, was originally submitted in 2021. Since then, an IAEA working group of experts from eleven countries has conducted five assessment missions and issued six technical reports, collaborating with the government and visiting the plant on several occasions.
Today, the Chinese ambassador to Japan, Wu Jianghao, stated at a press conference that there is no precedent for the discharge of sewage into an ocean after a nuclear accident: “The Japanese side alleges that all the nuclear power plants in the world discharge sewage, but it is water that has not been exposed to the meltdown,” Wu said, discrediting the IAEA and noting that some experts had suggested to Japan other options for disposing of the water, including dumping it as steam and placing it in a underground warehouse, alternatives that were ignored by Tokyo.
The issue is also hotly debated in South Korea, where the opposition has accused President Yoon Suk-yeol of siding with Japan after a scientific delegation was dispatched in May that is due to present its own analysis soon. “The Japanese government has not been clear about how sewage could affect marine life, especially the amount of radioactive elements that could end up in our food,” Kim Ji-moon, a left-wing party official, told Nikkei Asia. . Our country is one of the highest per capita consumers of fish in the world, so it is a matter of health and safety,” he added. Seoul has imposed a ban on the importation of fish products from the area near the Fukushima plant , a measure that the Executive has decided to maintain in the coming years.The Pacific Islands Forum, which includes Australia and New Zealand, among others, also joined the protests.
