The release of a third batch of treated radioactive wastewater from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean ended safely as planned, its operator said Monday, as the country's seafood producers continue to suffer from a Chinese import ban imposed after the discharges began.
Large amounts of radioactive wastewater have accumulated at the nuclear plant since it was damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. It began discharging treated and diluted wastewater into the ocean on Aug. 24 and finished releasing the third 7,800-ton batch on Monday. The process is expected to take decades.
The discharges have been strongly opposed by fishing groups and neighboring countries including China, which banned all imports of Japanese seafood, badly hurting Japanese producers and exporters of scallops and other seafood.
The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, said the third release, like the two previous ones, went smoothly and marine samples tested by it and the government showed that levels of all selected radionuclides were far lower than international safety standards.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in a meeting last Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, asked China to immediately lift the seafood ban but achieved only a vague agreement to “find ways to resolve the dispute through meetings and dialogue in a constructive manner.”
The two sides will convene a meeting of scientific experts to discuss the release but there was no timetable for a possible lifting of the ban, Kishida said.
Japan’s government has set up a relief fund to help find new markets for Japanese seafood, and the central and local governments have led campaigns to encourage Japanese consumers to eat more fish and support Fukushima seafood producers.
TEPCO is also providing compensation to the fisheries industry for “reputational damage” to its products caused by the wastewater release, and said it has mailed application forms to 580 possible compensation seekers.
The wastewater is treated to remove as much radioactivity as possible to meet legally releasable standards and then greatly diluted with seawater before it is discharged. TEPCO and the government say the process is safe, but some scientists say the continuing release of water containing radionuclides from damaged reactors is unprecedented and should be monitored closely.
Monday’s completion of the release of the third batch of wastewater brings the total to 23,400 tons. TEPCO plans a fourth release by the end of March 2024. That would only empty about 10 of the approximately 1,000 storage tanks at the Fukushima plant because of its continued production of wastewater, though officials say the pace of the discharges will pick up later. The tanks currently hold more than 1.3 million tons of wastewater, most of which needs to be retreated to meet safety standards before release.
TEPCO and the government say discharging the water into the sea is unavoidable because the tanks need to be removed from the grounds of the plant so that it can be decommissioned.
© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
27 Comments
Login to comment
diagonalslip
they'll be issuing these announcements for the next..... how many decades? then they can start the decommissioning....
Yubaru
Why? Decommissioning the plant will, but the release of the water in no way should take that long. They have already done 3 dumps, which would mean that they are planning on at least 6 or more per year. It shouldnt take decades!
sakurasuki
It just become another "routines" announcement now. China who really reminding J Govt and public that, this thing ain't routines.
wallace
While the corium or melted fuel remains in reactor 1,2&3 it will require cooling water. It is still unknown when and if it can be removed. The wastewater will continue to accumulate for decades.
The spent fuel remains in reactor 1&2. That needs to be removed before the corium. The internal radiation level inside the No 2 reactor is about 10-15 SIEVERTS because the reactor lid is ajar. Will be very difficult to remove the spent fuel with everything needing a remote control.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said a huge amount of radioactive materials apparently had attached to shield plugs of the containment vessels in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors. Removing those without exposing the radiation will be very difficult.
thepersoniamnow
Yubaru
Its highly diluted before its pumped out so maybe thats most of the tonnage?
Roy
Grab a calculator and the back of an envelope:
One batch of ten tanks released is about 9,000 m³. At 6 batches per year, they can release around 54,000 m³ each year.
At the same time, every day 60 m³ of new waste water are generated, that is about 22,000 m³ each year.
So in the end, they can reduce the amount of waste water in the tanks by (54,000-22,000=) 32,000 m³ each year.
They started with 1,300,000 m³ in the tanks. At 32,000 m³ each year, it will take them (1,300,000÷32,000=) 40 years, give or take.
And you are correct, it shouldn't take decades, but the extraordinarily tight limits imposed on them by themselves and the rest of the world means that it will.
wallace
How much more wastewater will accumulate over the next 40 years?
Sanjinosebleed
Ends safely...yeh sure....
nandakandamanda
And what percentage of the released water is fresh sea water?
In other words, is this 7,800 ton batch 'treated' tank water, i.e. pre dilution?
isabelle
Excellent news. All going to plan. China's opposition and seafood ban is, as stated many times, purely political and not at all based on science.
The decommissioning is already ongoing, and has been for many years. The overall process will take decades, but it's wrong to say it hasn't started. The information, such as the Roadmap, is here:
https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/index.html
Roy
Yes, of course.
(If they just released 7,800 m³ of diluted water, that release would contain than is newly produced in two days.)
Roy
"would contain less than"
A kingdom for an edit button ...
Gaijinmunkey
Like anyone trusts what TEPCO says...
I'd rather ask my dog for his opinion on nuclear safety matters
リッチ
So many comments about science this and science that and it’s safe, coming from people who said covid vaccine was fake and corona/covid was fake etc. We trust science or we don’t. I for one don’t think this is about science. It’s about trust. And if you trust TEPCO then your dilute-itional. They caused this issue and the world is paying for it. As for China ban, Japan wouldn’t do it in a heart beat if it were reversed? Anyway this whole topic is mute because they will do what they want and produce any report needed to claim it’s safe even though common sense clearly says different.
Bad Haircut
This is a rather fallacious statement to say the least. The way you put it, we either trust "The Science™" or we reject it wholesale - an idea that completely rejects all nuance and relative risk. Based on the evidence available, the controlled release of the water presents a low risk due to the dilution effect. To put this in perspective, consider Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both cities were rebuilt right after the war, and aside from the people who were directly affected by the blast and the fallout shortly afterward (including the cancers that emerged in them due to that fallout), there's been little if any lingering effect. So there is some real-life science that can be applied to Fukushima to indicate that in the initial period after the disaster the risk is high, it recedes quickly. Otherwise Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be uninhabitable. That doesn't mean there's no risk at all, just that it's very low.
With the COVID jabs, millions did not suffered adverse effects, but millions did due to the way the spike proteins interacted with their body, some mildly, some seriously, and some fatally. The risk to most people was/is lower from the virus than from the jabs, which is why many countries have banned them from certain age groups.
You are right, though, about trust, and when it comes to large organisations like governments and big corporations, they tend to have a pretty tenuous relationship with truth if the truth threatens their position/income. We saw this with TEPCO and the Japanese government with Fukushima, and numerous governments and their institutions, the jab makers, and a complicit media for COVID, when they were papering over unfavourable information when it came to questionable safety and efficacy of the jabs. They've trashed the trust we had in them, and that's tough if not impossible to restore.
isabelle
You don't have to. That's why the IAEA is monitoring it also.
Hideomi Kuze
Corporation who says "safe" no matter how it is danger, that is japan's deceptive nuclear industries including TEPCO.
Last month, they tried to make radioactive waste liquid scattering incident looks smaller than actual state.
Roy
That may have been true in the past, but it is certainly not true anymore. There are too many eyes involved now.
Did they? Who found out the truth then?
Daniel Neagari
When was that informatioin uncovered?
Where did that happened, you said in Japan, but where especifically.
Who, uncovered that? and Who was the responsible for the "liquied scattering incident"?
How did they covered up? how the discovering party discovered?
Why did they covered up? But most importantly, why only you have that information and is not have been published in any other media? By the way I check on daily basis a wide range of media including South China Post and Aljazeera and none of them has mentioned this news you say.
ian
Let's see if this will be tackled at the London convention meet
Derek Grebe
TEPCO says TEPCO did something right.
Stop the press.
Anyone else remember when TEPCO announced that there wasn’t a meltdown at all, and the explosion we had just seen on tv was simply steam escaping?
virusrex
Misrepresenting the reality means you understand you are being antiscientific but want to pretend otherwise, there is no group where vaccines represent more risk while active transmission is present. Not indicating further boosters at times where transmission lowers enough by other measures (and the person is already protected) is definetely not the same as "banning" them for age groups, specially when authorities still say they will support vaccination once the risk increases again because of the season.
The whole point of the inspections is that nobody has to trust TEPCO for anything, international experts are being in charge to confirm whatever is being said.
Bad Haircut
All I can say is LOL.
Roy
In lieu of an actual argument? Convincing.
Trapped
I'm sure the local surfers are elated that it 'ended safely'.
Roy
That is correct. Either you believe in the scientific process or you don't. Either you work within the scientific process or you don't. There is no inbetween.
The "nuance and relative risk" is determined by the scientific process and expressed in the scientific consensus. Which, unlike what a great number of antiscientific cranks want you to believe, is very seldomly stating anything in an absolute; There's a reason we have probabilities and confidence intervals.
You can very well question the scientific consensus, that is anyone's prerogative, as long as you realize that merely questioning it is no reason for it to change -- proof is.
virusrex
That is the point, claiming something and then being completely unable to defend that claim means you already understand the claim is false.