MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/. Japan’s decision to release radiation-tainted water from the accident-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean is correct, but this should be done far away from the shore, one of the leading global experts in nuclear security told TASS on Tuesday.
"The decision is correct, the water is clean. It would even be possible to discharge slightly polluted water, which is what the British were doing at Sellafield," said academician Leonid Bolshov, the founder and chief researcher of the Nuclear Safety Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"All they need is to choose the discharge zone that would be as far away from the shore: the ocean is large, the discharged water will mix with clean one and everything will be within normal levels. In this particular case, they are dumping water that had been purified to the drinking water standard. There is no reason to worry," the expert added.
At present, over 1.25 million tonnes of water, used for cooling down crippled reactors of the Fukishima-1 nuclear power plant, are being stored in steel tanks on the territory of the NPP. The water has reportedly been purified of all harmful radioactive substances except for tritium, as there is no technology to rid the water of it. On Tuesday, the Japanese government officially permitted to release into the ocean a significant amount of this water. Preparations for the release are expected to take about two years.