Japan plans to throw 1m tons of treated nuclear wastewater into the sea

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Japan announced Tuesday that it plans to dump 1 million tons of treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea, Business Insider reports. Set to be implemented in 2023, the plan is part of an ongoing effort to deal with the 2011 tsunami-triggered disaster at the plant.

Even before making its announcement, Japan had said it is running out of storage space for the wastewater it was left with after Fukushima was destroyed in the tsunami. In a statement, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said dumping the wastewater into the sea is “unavoidable.”

Although the water will have been treated to remove most nuclear contaminants, the presence of tritium particles cannot be removed, Business Insider reports. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission notes that tritium is not harmful in small concentrations, but the risk of cancer increases as concentration of the particle increases.

“The Japanese Government’s decision is in line with practice globally, even though the large amount of water at the Fukushima plant makes it a unique and complex case,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement on Tuesday. The IAEA said that controlled wastewater release into the ocean is “routinely used by operating nuclear power plants in the world.”
While the decision has been condemned by China and South Korea respectively as “highly irresponsible” and “unacceptable,” the US State Department said in a statement that Japan “appears to have adopted an approach in accordance with globally accepted nuclear safety standards.”

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