Tokyo:
Japan will start releasing a second batch of wastewater from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant from next week, its operator said, an exercise that angered China and others when it began in August.
On August 24, Japan began dumping into the Pacific Ocean some of the 1.34 million tons of wastewater that has accumulated since a tsunami crippled the facility in 2011.
“Inspections after the first release have been completed… The (second) release will begin on October 5,” TEPCO said on Thursday.
China banned all imports of Japanese seafood after the initial release, which ended on September 11, despite Tokyo’s insistence that the operation poses no risk.
Russia, whose relations with Japan are also frosty, is reportedly considering following suit on a seafood ban.
In the first phase, approximately 7,800 tons of water were released into the Pacific Ocean, out of a planned total of 1.34 million tons, equivalent to more than 500 Olympic swimming pools.
TEPCO says the water is filtered of all radioactive elements except tritium, which is within safe levels. This view is supported by the UN atomic agency.
China has accused Japan of using the ocean as a “sewage,” accusations echoed at the United Nations last week by Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare of the Solomon Islands, who has developed close ties with Beijing.
The release, which is expected to take decades, is intended to make room to eventually begin removing the highly dangerous radioactive fuel and debris from the destroyed reactors.
“As with the first discharge, we will continue to monitor tritium levels. We will continue to inform the public in a way that is easy to understand based on scientific evidence,” TEPCO official Akira Ono told reporters on Thursday.
Despite China’s ban on the import of Japanese seafood, Chinese boats continue to catch fish off the coast of Japan, in the same areas where Japanese vessels operate.
Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, last week posted photos of what he said were Chinese fishing boats off the coast of Japan on September 15.
“They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Chinese vessels fishing off the Japanese coast on September 15 post the Chinese embargo on seafood from the same waters
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