TOKYO, February 26. /TASS/. Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), which operates the disaster-hit Fukushima 1 NPP, has said that it plans to begin discharging the fourth batch of treated radioactive water from the nuclear facility on February 28.
The company has already released two batches of treated water from the Fukushima NPP. The procedure has been approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The seawater around the nuclear plant has not been found to have increased levels of tritium.
In March 2011, a tsunami knocked out power and cooling facilities at the Fukushima NPP, leading to a nuclear meltdown in three reactors, the destruction of their vessels, explosions and the release of large amounts of radioactive material. To date, the plant and surrounding areas have been almost completely cleaned up. However, the water that is constantly poured into the destroyed reactors to cool down nuclear fuel fragments flows out through gaps highly contaminated with radioactive particles.
There are currently over 1.34 mln tons of water at the NPP. That said, the Japanese government decided to gradually treat and then discharge this water into the sea. The process is expected to take 30 to 40 years. The water is treated through the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) and is also diluted with seawater but still contains tritium that cannot be removed. The maximum allowable concentration of tritium is 1,500 becquerels per liter, and the measurements that the Japanese officials and IAEA experts take in the ocean confirm that the treated water meets these parameters. Thus, China stopped importing seafood from Japan from August 24, 2023, when the first batch of water was discharged into the ocean. On October 16, 2023, Russia’s agricultural watchdog joined China’s ban on imports of fish and seafood from Japan.