"Fukushima: Japan approves releasing wastewater into ocean", 13 Apr 2021

Japan has approved a plan to release more than one million tonnes of contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.

The water will be treated and diluted so radiation levels are below those set for drinking water.

But the local fishing industry has strongly opposed the move, as have China and South Korea.

Tokyo says work to release water used to cool nuclear fuel will begin in about two years.

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Currently, the radioactive water is treated in a complex filtration process that removes most of the radioactive elements, but some remain, including tritium - deemed harmful to humans only in very large doses.

It is then kept in huge tanks, but the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TepCo) is running out of space, with these tanks expected to fill up by 2022.

About 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive water - or enough to fill 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools - are currently stored in these tanks, according to a Reuters report.

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Environmental groups like Greenpeace have long expressed their opposition to releasing the water into the ocean.

The NGO said Japan's plans to release the water showed the government "once again failed the people of Fukushima".

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Radiation from tritium can be ingested, however, which is why fishing industry groups are concerned about the risk of it getting into the food chain and being consumed through sea food.

The risk of this happening is not zero, but the scientific consensus is that it does not pose a threat to human health.

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