Waters Of Fukushima. World Protests, IAEA Sends Committee

The UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will send a team of experts to Japan for a new safety analysis of wastewater discharge from the former Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. From October 24 to 27, representatives from 11 countries – Argentina, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, China, France, South Korea, the Marshall Islands, Russia, the USA, and Vietnam – will visit Fukushima, which was devastated by an earthquake followed by a tsunami in March 2011.

It will be the first IAEA inspection since Japan began dumping, in late August, disinfected water that still contains significant amounts of tritium. The agency’s decision to send a team of inspectors to Japan was preceded by strong protests from China and Russia that condemned the spill of treated water and raised health concerns. China has banned the import of Japanese fish products, which has led to a serious crisis for the local fishing industry.

According to Japanese media reports, Fumio Kishida’s government confirmed that “it is committed to providing all necessary information to the IAEA to promote better understanding between the international community and Tokyo regarding the management of waste dumping operations.” The UN agency previously sent a task force to Japan in late May before giving the green light to water release operations that “will meet global safety standards.”

The entire operation could last more than 30 years, and independent experts said it would be impossible to predict the impact of releasing 1.34 million tons of radioactive water used to cool Fukushima’s destroyed reactors into the Pacific Ocean.