The operator of Fukushima Daiichi, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), announced on Thursday the start of the discharge into the ocean of treated and diluted radioactive wastewater from the nuclear power plant.
In a video broadcast live from the plant’s control room, TEPCO showed a team member turning on the pump that discharges the water into the sea at 1:03 p.m. (5:03 a.m. in Lisbon), three minutes after the start of the stage. final. , in a process that could extend until 2050.
The pump sent the first batch of diluted and treated water from a mixing pool to a secondary pool, from where the water is discharged into the ocean, one kilometer offshore, through an underwater tunnel.
The launch came after TEPCO confirmed that there had been no impact due to the launch by North Korea of a suspected spy satellite, which triggered the activation of the anti-missile alert in the south of the Japanese archipelago.
TEPCO had warned that the Fukushima Daiichi plant could run out of space to store around 1.33 million tons of water, from rain, groundwater or injections needed to cool the cores of nuclear reactors, at the beginning of 2024.
The operator aims to release 31,200 tonnes of treated water by the end of March 2024, which would empty only 10 of the approximately 1,000 storage tanks, although the rate of discharge is expected to increase later.
Preparations began on Tuesday, after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida gave final backing at a meeting of ministers involved in the plan, approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Also on Tuesday, one ton of treated water was mixed with 1,200 tons of seawater, and the mixture was kept in the primary pool for two days for final sampling to ensure safety, a TEPCO official said.
Junichi Matsumoto had said that, in the first phase, which should last about 17 days, some 7,800 cubic meters of water containing tritium, a radioactive substance that is only dangerous in highly concentrated doses, would be released.
The release of water begins almost 12 and a half years after the March 2011 nuclear meltdown, triggered by a powerful earthquake and tsunami.
The plan raised concerns among Japanese fishermen’s groups as well as neighboring countries, sparking street protests in South Korea and prompting mainland China and the Chinese regions of Hong Kong and Macao to ban imports of some food products from 10 provinces of Japan.
In a statement released about half an hour after the announcement of the start of the downloads, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized the decision as “an extremely selfish and irresponsible action that does not take international public interest into account.”
Source: TSF
