The government of Japan announced a decision to start dumping over a million tons of treated but still wastewater that are radioactive from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean in two years.
Protesters Rallied Outside Government Offices
The plant was damaged severely in a magnitude 9.0 tsunami and quake in 2011 that left around 20,000 people in northeast Japan missing or dead. In spite of the assurances of Tokyo that wastewater discharge will not become a threat to people or the environment, the decision was criticized roundly by the environmental groups, local fishing community, and Japan's neighbors.
Within some hours of the announcement, protesters gathered outside government offices in Fukushima and Tokyo rallying."On the assumption of strict compliance with regulatory standards that have been official, we pick oceanic release," the government of Japan said in a statement after ministers of the Cabinet made a finalization on the decision.
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Fukushima Plant
The water will be and diluted and treated furtherly, and the release will start in two years, and take decades to be completed. The destroyed Fukushima plant will take at least decades to deactivate.
An area of land close to the plant stays uninhabitable, thousands of inhabitants remain disturbed, and the wastewater problem is another instance of the disaster of the 2011 complex, long-term effects.
Since the tsunami and quake that destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, water that was used to cool the contaminated groundwater and nuclear reactors have been kept in huge tanks at the plants. The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the plant, says that by about next summer there will be no space to construct new tanks to hold the 1.25 million tons of wastewater that will be accumulated.
TEPCO
Critics dispute that the government could get more land to construct tanks for storage.The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said last year that the plan of Japan to release the water - or instead, allow it evaporate into the air - was technically achievable, "regularly used by the operation of nuclear power plants worldwide," and soundly centered on safety and environmental impact assessments.
TEPCO revealed that the wastewater has been treated to take out many radioactivity. However, a radioactive hydrogen isotope (tritium) remains. But environmental groups are still doubtful of the claim of the government and TEPCO.
The Unchanged Decision
A campaigner at Friends of the Earth Japan, Ayumi Fukakusa, a Tokyo-based nongovernmental organization said: "This decision-making process is quite autocratic."
"The government and TEPCO said that without approval from the fishing communities, they won't release the contaminated water," she notes. "That promise was totally broken."
Prime Minister Yoshihide Sug had a meeting last week with the president of JF Zengyoren, Hiroshi Kishi, a nationwide federation of fishing cooperatives, and requested their understanding about the decision of the government, but Kishi said the stance of the group remains unchanged.
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