According to the plant’s operator, Japan will start dumping a second batch of wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant from next week. This drill, which started in August and infuriated China and others, will continue.
Japan started releasing part of the 1.34 million tonnes of wastewater that have accumulated since a tsunami destroyed the facility in 2011 on August 24.
“The inspections following the first release have been completed… The (second) discharge will start on October 5,” TEPCO said on Thursday.
After the initial release, which ended on September 11, China forbade the import of any Japanese seafood, despite Tokyo’s insistence that there is no danger from the operation.
Russia is apparently considering adopting a seafood ban, despite having tense relations with Japan.
Out of a planned total of 1.34 million tonnes, or more than 500 Olympic swimming pools, around 7,800 tonnes of water—or about 7,800 Olympic swimming pools—were released into the Pacific during the first phase.
TEPCO claims that all radioactive materials have been removed from the water, with the exception of tritium, which is present at safe quantities. The UN Atomic Agency concurs with that opinion.
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare of the Solomon Islands, who has cultivated close ties with Beijing, echoed China’s charges that Japan uses the ocean as a “sewer” at the United Nations last week.
The discharge, which will likely take decades to complete, is intended to clear the way for the very hazardous radioactive fuel and debris from the destroyed reactors to eventually be removed.
“As was the case for the first discharge, we will continue to monitor the tritium levels. We will continue to inform the public in ways that are easy to understand based on scientific evidence,” TEPCO official Akira Ono told reporters Thursday.
Despite China’s ban on Japanese seafood imports, Chinese boats are reportedly continuing to catch fish off Japan in the same areas that Japanese vessels operate.
Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, last week posted photos of what he said were Chinese fishing boats off Japan on September 15.
“They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Chinese vessels fishing off Japan’s coast on September 15th, post China’s seafood embargo from the same waters,” Emanuel said on social media platform X.
