Safety of Fukushima waste water focus of sea release debate
text_fields
Okuma (Japan): Inside a giant decontamination facility at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant, workers in hazmat suits monitor radioactive water pumped from three damaged reactors, making sure it's adequately though not completely treated.
Three lines of equipment connected to pipes snaking around in this dimly lit, sprawling facility can process up to 750 tons of contaminated water a day.
Four other lines elsewhere in the plant can process more.
From there, the water is pumped to a complex of about 1,000 temporary storage tanks that crowd the plant's grounds, where additional tanks are still being built.
Officials say the huge tanks will be completely full by the summer of 2022.
The decontamination process, which The Associated Press viewed on a recent tour, is a key element of a contentious debate over what should be done with the nearly 1.2 million tons of still-radioactive water being closely watched by governments and organizations around the world ahead of this summer's Tokyo Olympics.
The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, says it needs to free up space as work to decommission the damaged reactors approaches a critical phase.
It's widely expected that TEPCO will gradually release the water into the nearby ocean following a government decision allowing it to do so. The company is still vague on the timing.
But local residents, especially fishermen, are opposed to the plan because they think the water release would hurt the reputation of already battered fisheries, where annual sales remain about half of the level before the nuclear accident, even though the catch has cleared strict radioactivity tests.
TEPCO Chief Decommissioning Officer Akira Ono says the water must be disposed as the plant's decommissioning moves forward because the area used by the tanks is needed to build facilities for the retrieval of melted reactor debris.
Workers are planning to remove a first batch of melted debris by December 2021.