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IAEA director says Fukushima wastewater is not dangerous
IAEA Director General Grossi said wastewater from the Fukushima plant in Japan has radioactive tritium concentrations below the permissible limit and is not dangerous.
“To date, we can confirm that the first wastewater discharge does not contain potentially harmful levels of radiation,” said International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi. 8, refers to the discharge of wastewater from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the sea.
Japan on August 24 began discharging its first batch of wastewater, pumping 7,800 tons of water into the sea in 17 days.
Tokyo plans to carry out four batches in fiscal year 2023 (from now to March 2024), expected to discharge 31,200 tons of water.
Japan in March 2011 suffered a double disaster of earthquake and tsunami, affecting the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
TEPCO, the plant operator, has to treat about 1,000 steel tanks containing 1.34 million tons of contaminated water used to cool the reactor.
“The start is going exactly as we predicted, but we will continue to monitor until the final amount of wastewater is released,” added Mr. Grossi.
An aerial view of the treated wastewater tanks at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on August 24.
The IAEA said on August 24 that the agency’s independent analysis of tritium concentrations in Fukushima’s wastewater was “much lower than the organization’s limit of 1,500 bq/l (becquerel/liter)”.
This limit is about 7 times lower than the WHO recommendation of not exceeding 10,000 bq/l for drinking water.
Japan has repeatedly affirmed that wastewater discharged from Fukushima is harmless.
The Japanese seafood management agency also announced that no traces of tritium were detected in fish samples caught from the waters surrounding the Fukushima nuclear plant.
However, the discharge has raised concerns among local fishermen and angered China.
Beijing has imposed a ban on importing seafood originating from all Japanese provinces, in order to “prevent food safety risks, protect the health of Chinese consumers and ensure food safety.” import”.
