China to express readiness to lift import ban on Japanese seafood

China will express its readiness to lift a ban on imports of Japanese seafood once Japan and the U.N. nuclear watchdog agree to allow third-party countries to join monitoring activities on the discharge of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea, diplomatic sources said Thursday.

The Japanese government and the International Atomic Energy Agency plan to expand the roles of third-party countries in water discharge monitoring, the sources said, at a time when China is seeking an independent sampling of water and building a long-term international monitoring structure.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi will agree to allow third parties to take part in sampling of treated water and seawater near the Fukushima Daiichi complex in their telephone talks to be held Friday, the sources said.

Beijing has imposed a blanket ban on imports of Japanese seafood since the beginning of the treated water discharge in August last year, calling the water "nuclear-contaminated."

It is unclear whether the ban will be fully lifted or when China's imports of Japanese seafood might partially or completely resume.

Tokyo has separately been holding talks on the matter with Beijing, hoping to pave the way for the ban's removal.

Japan believes the new monitoring plan under the IAEA's framework will effectively meet China's demands while maintaining fairness and objectivity in water discharge monitoring, the sources said.

Currently, the IAEA's task force, involving experts from around a dozen countries, conducts a safety review on the water release.

The new agreement with the IAEA will also include an increase in points of sampling, according to the sources.

The discharge of the accumulated water is part of the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s decommissioning of the nuclear complex.

The water is processed through an advanced liquid processing system to remove most contaminants, except for the relatively nontoxic tritium, before it is released into the Pacific Ocean.

Since the discharge began, no abnormalities have been detected in the monitoring of seawater around the plant, including the concentration levels of tritium, according to the Japanese government.

© KYODO