Japan insisted that the Fukushima water it will discharge into the Pacific is safe

Japan has insisted that the Fukushima water it will discharge into the Pacific is safe. (REUTERS/Aaron Sheldrick)

The Japanese Government assured this Monday that the discharge of treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant “is safe” and that the Executive is carrying out the process with the greatest transparency.

“The government has shared the information transparently and has no intention of discharging unsafe water into the sea,” a Japanese government official said Monday at a briefing to the foreign press in the country.

The Executive’s response comes after it approved in early January a revised plan to dump contaminated and treated water that accumulates in the troubled Fukushima power plant into the Pacific in the coming months.

An official from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) assured that “there has been success in reducing the concentration of radioactive substances using the ALPS system, but there are occasions in which, after this treatment, the concentration percentage was below above the regulation.

In January, a plan was approved to dump the contaminated and treated water that accumulates in the damaged nuclear plant into the ocean in the coming months. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)

According to said source, this would have occurred just after the launch of said system or just at the beginning of operations, when the main objective was to reduce the exposure of citizens to contaminated water.

The highly contaminated water generated by the plant is processed in circuits called ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) to remove 62 types of radioactive materials, with the exception of tritium, and is again stored in drums before being discharged into the sea.

METI insisted that tritium, in low concentrations, is present in nature, such as in tap water, rain and in the human body, and that the levels of this element that will be discharged into the sea will be forty times below the limit. established by the Government of Japan for drinking water.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also pointed out on January 20 that the discharge into the sea of ​​this water will be based “on the highest international safety standards”, given the concern of neighboring countries.

In this sense, the METI pointed out that more than 100 training sessions and dialogues have been carried out with neighboring countries such as South Korea and China and that they “plan to continue doing so in the coming months”.

The Fukushima plant’s cooling systems were overwhelmed in 2011 when a powerful underwater earthquake triggered a tsunami that caused the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

The site generated 100 cubic meters of contaminated water per day between April and November last year, a combination of groundwater, seawater and rainwater that mixed with cooling water.

The liquid is filtered to eliminate radionuclides and transferred to storage tanks, which already hold more than 1.3 million cubic meters and space is running out.

(With information from EFE)

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