Washington, 18 August 2023 (TDI): On 15 August, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the U.S. is satisfied with Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water.
The treated radioactive water will be released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that was destroyed by a tsunami more than a decade ago.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was announced as unworkable in 2011 after the tsunami swept the region.
The Japanese government plans to release the radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean in the last week of August.
The Japanese government has been focusing on containing radioactivity at the site. The plan will be implemented in the next few weeks.
The Japanese government has been warning for years that Japan is running out of space to keep the radioactive water anymore which is more than 1 million tons.
Instead of releasing the radioactive material directly into the ocean, Japan had been putting its efforts to reduce the radioactivity of the water through ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System).
The ALPS treatment decreases the concentration of the radioactive materials and sufficiently dilutes the radioactive water before the release into the ocean so that radioactive materials will be far below the regulatory standards for safety.
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Antony Blinken, while talking to the reporters, described Japan’s plan as “safe and per international standards, including critically the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) nuclear safety standards.”
Additionally, He expressed his satisfaction with the transparent scientific process done by Atomic Energy Agency in collaboration with Japan.
