It is reported that the Japanese government will soon push ahead with discharging contaminated water from Fukushima's No. 1 nuclear power plant to the sea.
According to NHK and other local media on the 6th (local time), the Japanese government said at a related ministerial meeting held on the 13th of last month that the discharge of contaminated water is expected to be "from spring to summer this year." "We started construction of the discharge facility in August last year and plan to finish the construction within this spring ahead of the discharge," a Tokyo Electric Power Company official, the operator of Fukushima's first nuclear power plant, told foreign reporters recently.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is verifying the safety of contaminated water at the request of the Japanese government and will release a final report before discharge.
The Japanese government said it plans to purify the contaminated water with AlPS and remove most of the radioactive materials before releasing them. If purified with ALPS, 62 types of radioactive materials, including cesium, can be removed, but tritium is not filtered. A trace number of nuclear species such as carbon 14 also remain in the water treated with ALPS.
In response, the Japanese government decided to lower the concentration of tritium that could not be removed with ALPS. The plan is to make the concentration of tritium less than 1,500 becquerels per liter, which is 1/40th of the country's regulatory standards and send it off the coast of 1km of nuclear power plants.
As such, some point out that this is an "irresponsible policy" amid preparations for the discharge of contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. This is because concerns about the safety of marine products are still high, with radioactive substances detected above the standard in fish caught in Fukushima Prefecture.
In April 2021, the cesium concentration of one Jopibolak (rockfish) caught off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture recorded 270//kg. This was about three times the standard value (100//kg) set by the Japanese government. In response, the Japanese government issued an order to restrict Jofibolac shipments and lifted it in December of the same year. However, in January last year, the shipment was restricted again after 1400 shipment/kg of Jopibolak, whose cesium concentration is 14 times the standard, was caught.
In addition, radioactive substances exceeding the standard were also detected in each case of freshwater fish gondulmae and freshwater trout, which were already restricted from shipping at the time of the 2021 test.
Meanwhile, Korea's fisheries-related organizations have also begun to come up with countermeasures due to concerns over shrinking seafood consumption caused by Japan's discharge of contaminated water from nuclear power plants. The Korea Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives operates the Japan Nuclear Power Plant Pollution Response Team, and the Korea Federation of Fisheries Managers operates the Japan Nuclear Power Plant Pollution Response Committee. [Financial News]