TOKYO – Fukushima nuclear plant operators today unveiled plans to construct an undersea tunnel to release more than a million tonnes of treated water from the site into the ocean.
They announced the plans for the 1km tunnel after the Japanese government decided in April to release the accumulated water in two years’ time.
Ministers said the release is safe because the water will have been processed to remove almost all radioactive elements, and will be diluted.
But the April decision triggered a furious reaction from neighbouring countries, and fierce opposition from local fishing communities.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said it will start building the tunnel by March next year, after carrying out feasibility studies and obtaining approval from authorities.
It will have a diameter of about 2.5m and stretch east into the Pacific from tanks at the plant containing around 1.27 million tonnes of treated water.
This includes water used to cool the plant, which was crippled after going into meltdown following a huge 2011 tsunami, as well as rain and groundwater that seeps in daily.
An extensive pumping and filtration system extracts tonnes of newly contaminated water each day and filters out most radioactive elements.
But fishing communities fear releasing the water will undermine years of work to restore confidence in their seafood.
The plant’s chief decommissioning officer, Akira Ono, today said releasing the water through a tunnel will help prevent it flowing back to the shore.
“We will thoroughly explain our safety policies and the measures we are taking against reputation damage, so that we can dispel concerns held by people involved in fisheries” and other industries, he told reporters.
Tepco in a statement said it is ready to pay compensation for reputation damage related to the release.
It will also accept inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the safety of the release, it added.
IAEA has already endorsed Japan’s decision.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has called the disposing of the water an “inevitable task” in the decades-long process of decommissioning the nuclear plant.
Debate over how to handle the water has dragged on for years, as space to store it at the site runs out.
The filtration process removes most radioactive elements from the water, but some remain, including tritium.
Experts said the element is only harmful to humans in large doses and with dilution, the treated water poses no scientifically detectable risk. – AFP, August 25, 2021
