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Japan prepares to start dumping 540 Olympic-sized pools of Fukushima waste water into the Pacific
- Each of the 1.34 million cubic metres of waste water will be diluted with 1,200 cubic metres of seawater before release, plant operator Tepco said
- The release, set to take several decades, has been endorsed by the UN’s nuclear watchdog, which said it will have staff on site for the start
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The final preparations to discharge waste water from the crippled Fukushima power plant in Japan began on Wednesday, its operator said, a day before the scheduled release into the Pacific Ocean.
Tokyo had announced on Tuesday that the operation into the Pacific would begin on Thursday, prompting an angry response from China and partial import bans on Japanese seafood by Hong Kong and Macau.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the plant operator, said on Tuesday that it diluted a cubic metre of the waste water with around 1,200 cubic metres of seawater and allowed it to flow into position in a pipe.
This water will be tested and then from Thursday released into the sea together with more water stored at the site that will be transferred and diluted, Tepco said in a statement.
The Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station was knocked out by a massive earthquake and tsunami that killed around 18,000 people in March 2011, sending three of its reactors into meltdown.
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