Chinanews.com, April 19 (Zhang Aolin) On April 19, Japan officially began to discharge the fifth batch of Fukushima nuclear contaminated water, which will last until May 7, and the discharge is about the same as the previous four times, still about 7,800 tons. This is the first batch of nuclear-contaminated water to be discharged from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in fiscal 2024 (April 2024 to March 2025), and 54,600 tons of nuclear-contaminated water will be discharged for the whole year, a significant increase from about 30,000 tons in fiscal 2023.
Data map: Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
Recently, there have been many strong earthquakes in Japan, such as the strong earthquake off Fukushima in March, which caused the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water to be suspended for a time, and the safety of sewage discharge has become more and more serious. At the same time, the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) have ignored public anger and insisted on starting the fifth discharge despite public anger, causing widespread concern.
Another 55,000 tons will be emitted!
The total amount of nuclear-contaminated water continues to increase
On August 24, 2023, Japan officially launched the discharge of Fukushima nuclear contaminated water into the sea, and has completed four batches of discharge. In just six months, more than 30,000 tons of nuclear-contaminated water have flowed into the Pacific Ocean.
And that's just the beginning.
According to TEPCO's latest plan, 54,600 tons of nuclear-contaminated water will be discharged in seven installments in fiscal 2024, about 1.7 times that of fiscal 2023.
According to some data, 1.3 million tons of contaminated water from Fukushima had been stored before the official discharge began, and it would take at least 30 years to drain all of this water. At present, the amount of nuclear-contaminated water in Fukushima is still surging at a rate of about 90 tons per day.
A key step in solving the problem of increasing contaminated water is to complete the "waste furnace" (the decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear power plant). According to the Japanese government's previous goal, it plans to complete the scrapping work by 2051, 40 years after the nuclear accident.
However, the "biggest difficulty" in the scrapping work, the removal of nuclear residues, is not progressing very well. It is estimated that as many as 880 tons of nuclear residue have melted down from units 1 to 3 of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and the removal of nuclear residue, which was originally planned to begin in 2021, has been postponed three times.
The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) pointed out in the report that given the current situation, there is increasing uncertainty about completing the scrapping plan within 40 years, which also means that the Fukushima nuclear contaminated water will continue to increase.
Data map: TEPCO officials explain at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
After the strong earthquake, sewage was suspended for a time
Safety hazards raise concerns
Japan is located in the Pacific Rim Seismic Zone, the world's most active seismic zone, which is also the world's most earthquake-prone seismic zone. In the first few months of 2024 alone, there have already been a number of strong earthquakes in Fukushima, Iwate and Ehime prefectures in Japan, and there are nuclear power plants around the epicenters of these earthquakes.
In the early morning of March 15, local time, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck off the coast of Fukushima, and the area where the Fukushima nuclear power plant is located was clearly felt.
Japanese media reported that this is the first time that the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water into the sea has been urgently suspended in the discharge process since August 2023.
On April 17, after a 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck the waters west of Japan's island of Shikoku, the neighboring Iranian nuclear power plant malfunctioned and caused a drop in power generation. And this is just a few hours after TEPCO announced the fifth release of nuclear contaminated water from Fukushima.
In addition to the earthquake, there have been many accidents at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, such as the leakage of nuclear-contaminated water caused by the failure of workers to close the valves, and the sputtering of nuclear-contaminated water by workers.
Doubts have been raised about TEPCO's reliability and transparency in dealing with nuclear-contaminated water. Despite this, the Japanese side insisted on pushing forward with the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water into the sea, claiming that the discharge system was "very safe".
People in Japan and abroad protested one after another
Fukushima fishermen: We don't agree!
Thirteen years ago, a magnitude 9 earthquake struck the east coast of Japan and triggered a tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear accident, killing and missing more than 22,000 people, evacuating a large number of people, and turning the area around the nuclear accident into a "ghost town" overnight.
So far, there are still seven municipalities and about 309 square kilometers of the nuclear accident disaster area, and more than 29,000 people have to continue to evacuate, nine percent of them from Fukushima Prefecture.
13 years after that disaster, people in many parts of Japan spontaneously held protest rallies to point the finger at the Japanese government and TEPCO!
On March 11, protesters said that 13 years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear accident, but they still have not waited for Fukushima to recover and revitalize, but have waited for the nuclear-contaminated water to be forcibly discharged into the sea.
On March 11, local time, demonstrators protested in front of the Japanese Consulate General in San Francisco against the Japanese government's discharge of nuclear-contaminated water into the sea.
In addition, the Japanese people are worried about the future of Fukushima, such as the clean-up of the radioactive soil, the reconstruction of the affected areas, and the related compensation lawsuits, which have not been properly addressed.
On the same day, in front of the Japanese Consulate General in San Francisco on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, a large number of local people held banners such as "Fukushima - Earth's nuclear alarm" and "Stop dumping nuclear-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean" to protest the Japanese government's discharge of the sea.
April 13 marks the third anniversary of the Japanese government's official decision to discharge nuclear-contaminated water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean. On the same day, a Japanese group called "Stop Polluting the Sea: Citizens' Meeting" held an international forum on "Voices of people living in the waters of Fukushima."
The group believes that the Japanese government and TEPCO are "very angry" about the forced discharge of nuclear-contaminated water into the sea amid huge concerns and opposition from citizens, scientists, and other countries in Japan and abroad.
"None of us are in favor of this approach, and I still don't agree with that," Ono, 72, who has been a fisherman for most of his life, said at the forum. Originally from Shinchi, about 55 kilometers north of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, he began fishing with his father at the age of 15.
Fishermen are one of the most affected groups in the problems caused by the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water.
Ono also called for more attention to the Japanese government's move to discharge sewage into the sea: "This is a question that not only fishermen, but also everyone should think about together." ”
Source: China News Network