By Hiroshi HIYAMA The release of wastewater from Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific will begin on Thursday,
The release of wastewater from Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific will begin on Thursday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has announced, despite opposition from fishermen and protests by China.
In one of the world’s worst-ever atomic disasters, the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant was knocked out by a massive earthquake and tsunami that killed around 18,000 people in March 2011. Environmental pressure group Greenpeace has said the filtration process is flawed and that an “immense” quantity of radioactive material will be dispersed into the sea over the coming decades.
The UN atomic watchdog said in July that the release would have a “negligible radiological impact on people and the environment”.Many South Koreans are alarmed at the prospect of the release, staging demonstrations and even stocking up on sea salt because of fears of contamination. China has accused Japan of treating the ocean like a “sewer”, banning imports of food from 10 Japanese prefectures even before the release and imposing strict radiation checks.This has worried people involved in Japan’s fishing industry, just as business was beginning to recover more than a decade after the nuclear disaster.
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