More than 10 people were arrested for trying to enter the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea, during a demonstration to denounce the Fukushima water discharge into the sea, local police said Thursday.
A small group of protesters gathered in front of the embassy with signs reading: “The ocean is not Japan’s garbage can.”
For its part, the South Korean news agency Yonhap indicates that 16 people, all university students, were arrested for this attempted intrusion.
Other protesters were dispersed and access to the building housing the embassy was restricted by the police shortly after this incident.
Seoul has publicly supported Tokyo’s decision to discharge contaminated water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant starting today.
“I call on the Japanese government to publish launch information in a transparent and responsible manner for the next 30 years,” South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said today.
On Thursday, the Japanese authorities activated pumps and valves for a first release.
The electric company Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has been trying since March 2011 to deal with the consequences of the accident at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo), damaged by an earthquake and a tsunami.
The biggest problem it has been facing for weeks is how to prevent groundwater contaminated by the site’s strong radioactivity from escaping into the Pacific Ocean.
Given the lack of means to treat, store and confine this water, Tepco recognized at the end of July, for the first time, that part of the water was being discharged into the sea.
Source: TSF
