JAPAN has released about 173,000 tons of nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the sea in 22 rounds of ocean discharge over the past three years.
Monday (August 24) marks three years since wastewater was first released from the plant. When the releases began, the tanks held 1.33 million tons of wastewater, and that amount has only been reduced by 100,000 tons, down 7 percent.
The plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) plans to increase the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water starting from this fiscal year, with the goal of completing decommissioning of the plant by 2051, though it remains unclear whether the timeline could be achieved.
The latest release, also the fourth round in fiscal 2026, began on July 30 and was completed on Monday afternoon.
The newly discharged 7,888-ton wastewater contained approximately 1.3 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium, TEPCO said.
In the fiscal year that began in April, TEPCO plans to release about 62,400 tonnes of wastewater in eight rounds.
Struck by a 9-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami on March 11, 2011, the Fukushima nuclear plant suffered core meltdowns that released radiation, resulting in a level-7 nuclear accident, the highest on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.
Despite concerns and opposition from the international community, Japan unilaterally launched the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi plant into the ocean on August 24, 2023.
