VIENNA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th September, 2019) Japan will inform the international community about the steps it will decide to take in relation to handling the tritium-tainted wastewater from the disaster-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and may request a review mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to address the possible concerns of other states, an official from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) told Sputnik.
Earlier in September, then-Japanese Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada said that TEPCO, an operator of the Fukushima No 1 nuclear power plant, had no choice but to empty a massive amount of contaminated wastewater into the ocean. The announcement sparked uproar from Japan's neighbors, North and South Korea.
"We think that international society is very important so we will continue to explain and share our information to the international society," Tatsuya Shinkawa, the director general for nuclear accident disaster response at the METI, said on the sidelines of the annual IAEA General Conference in Vienna when asked whether Tokyo planned to invite any international experts to monitor the possible release of wastewater into the ocean.
He noted that Japan would request a review mission of the UN nuclear watchdog if its handling of the wastewater raised concerns of the international community.
"We asked the IAEA and accepted IAEA inspections four times. I cannot promise a future IAEA mission but, anyway, I think that in the future we will ask [for] an IAEA mission [whatever] decision we make. I don't say that [Japan] will release it to the sea or air. If an international community has a concern, we will ask the IAEA for a review mission," Shinkawa noted.
More than a million tonnes of wastewater is currently stored in tanks at the Fukushima site, but the facility is reportedly running out of available space and expects to exhaust its capacity by summer 2022.
�The accident at the Fukushima plant in March 2011 was triggered by a 46-feet tsunami that hit Japan following a 9.0-magnitude offshore earthquake. The meltdown at three out of the four units and hydrogen-air explosions, which were provoked by a cooling systems failure, led to the leakage of radioactive materials and the shutdown of the plant.
