April 14, 2021 — Japan will start releasing more than 1 million metric tons of treated radioactive water from its destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean in two years, the government said Tuesday — a plan that faces opposition at home and has raised “grave concern” in neighboring countries.
The decision to release the wastewater comes more than a decade after the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011, having been repeatedly delayed due to safety concerns and strong opposition from local fishermen still reeling from the fallout of the crisis.
Work to release the water into the Pacific Ocean will begin in about two years, and the whole process is expected to take decades, according to the Japanese government.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said dealing with the treated water is “an unavoidable issue” in order to decommission the nuclear plant.
“We have decided that guaranteeing safety far above the accepted standard, and ensuring the entire government’s best efforts to prevent reputational damage, means releasing it to the ocean is a realistic option,” he said.
In 2011, a powerful earthquake and tsunami cut off power supply and cooling systems for the Fukushima plant. To prevent its three damaged reactor cores from melting, cooling water was pumped in continuously, and was thus contaminated by uranium fuel rods. The water then leaked into damaged basements and tunnels, and mixed with groundwater.