A decision has been made to release radioactive tritium water from Fukushima’s No. 1 nuclear plant into the sea. Toyoshi Fuketa has stated that they will face challenges by releasing the water into the sea or not. About one million tons of the radioactive water is still inside the reactor with nowhere to go.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. regularly treats the tainted coolant water from the damaged plant and is then stored in hundreds of water tanks set up within the plant’s compound. Dangerous radioactive materials such as Uranium and Plutonium are removed during treatment but one material is relatively harmless to human health: Tritium.
Other nuclear power plants around the world, treated radioactive water containing tritium is dumped into the sea. An average pressured-water reactor for commercial use in Japan usually dumps 60 trillion becquerels of tritium a year into the sea.
However, local fishermen are worried about the negative impact from the water, specifically, the effect of the safety of marine life near the Fukushima plant. Tepco, on the other hand, has not yet reached a decision on how to deal with the stored water.
The NRA says that legally, a nuclear power plant must dump tritium-tainted water after diluting it to 60,000 becquerels per liter.
The tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011 effectively destroyed the plant. The plant itself is located 10 meters above sea level which flooded its power supply facilities.
The plant’s cooling systems were severely damaged and reactors 1 and 3 suffered meltdowns in the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
