Japan’s Fisheries Agency opposes Tokyo Electric Power plan to release radioactive material into Pacific water

AllHeadlineNews: Japan’s Fisheries Agency opposes Tokyo Electric Power plan to release radioactive material into Pacific water
Japan’s Fisheries Agency blocked a plan by Tokyo Electric Power to release into the Pacific water with traces of radioactive materials from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.


The utility informed the agency of the planned release of contaminated water after it reduced level the radioactive substances to trace levels. The company stored the 3,000 tons of radioactive water at its crippled plant 1.

With the rejection by the Fisheries Agency of the TEPCO plan, the utility firm’s storage facility runs the risk of being corrosion by salt in the water sitting inside the tanks over a prolonged period. Tokyo Electric initially planned to keep the water in the tanks, but decided to release it because of corrosion that developed in the storage containment.

According to reports, the 3,000 tons of water have small amounts of cobalt, a radioactive material.

Because of the Fisheries Agency’s objections, Tokyo Electric said it would further clean the water using a mineral called zeolite before it will seek again the agency’s nod to release it into Pacific.

The proper handling of contaminated hazardous materials is one of the lessons that Japan is learning the hard way. Andre-Claude Lacoste, chairman of the French Nuclear Safety Agency, estimated that it would take Japan at least 10 years to learn all the lessons from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Lacoste said on Wednesday at a Paris forum organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency that the decade estimate is based on similar time frames it took the U.S. and Soviet governments to learn lessons from the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear disasters.

Lacoste’s assessment came after Japan’s nuclear regulator admitted in a report it issued earlier this week that the country was not prepared for an accident as serious as the Fukushima near meltdown.