Prime Minister to visit Fukushima plant before start of controversial releases

2023-08-19 13:41:33

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that he will visit the Fukushima nuclear power plant on Sunday, ahead of the dumping of treated water which is expected to begin at the end of the summer. Tokyo plans to discharge into the Pacific Ocean, over the next few decades, water from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (northeast of the country), ravaged by the triple disaster earthquake-tsunami-nuclear accident in March 2011.

The plan has raised concerns in neighboring countries, sparking protests in South Korea and leading China to ban some food imports. Kishida, who is attending a trilateral summit at Camp David near Washington with US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, told reporters he would visit the plant on Sunday upon his return.

“The discharge of treated water is an issue that cannot be postponed if steady progress is to be made in the dismantling and reconstruction of Fukushima,” he said. Kishida said the government is in the “final stage” of making a decision but declined to comment on when exactly the releases will start. According to the local press, the dumping should start as early as the end of August.

1.33 million tons of contaminated water

Last month, the plan to discharge treated water from the plant cleared the final regulatory hurdle, with the approval of the United Nations nuclear watchdog. About 1.33 million tonnes of this water, from rain, groundwater or injections needed to cool the cores of nuclear reactors that went into meltdown in 2011, are now stored on the site of the plant, which will soon arrive at saturation.

Plans by Japan and the plant’s operator, TEPCO, to release the water into the Pacific have faced local and regional opposition. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the release would have “negligible” environmental effects and is consistent with water releases from other nuclear power plants.

But neither that approval nor the Japanese government’s efforts have convinced Beijing, which has said it will ban food imports from ten Japanese prefectures, and require rigorous testing for food from the rest. from the country. In South Korea, public concern over the plan remains high, but the South Korean government said it has reviewed the plan, which it found meets international standards.