A full month has passed since the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company forced the start of the Fukushima nuclear contaminated water discharge. A number of Japanese media reports said that the second round of discharge is expected to be launched at the end of this month to early October.
More than 1.3 million tons of nuclear contaminated water is stored in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) have decided to discharge the nuclear contaminated water into the sea after treatment and dilution by the Multi-Nuclide Treatment System (MNTS) on the grounds that a large number of storage tanks in the plant hindered the operation of the waste reactor. Although the decision to discharge into the sea was strongly opposed by Japan and abroad, the Japanese government and TEPCO still started the discharge of nuclear contaminated water into the sea on August 24th. The afternoon of September 11 local time, Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, the first batch of nuclear contaminated water all discharged, meaning that about 7,800 tons of nuclear contaminated water has flowed into the Pacific Ocean.
According to the latest Japanese media reports, the second round of Fukushima nuclear contaminated water discharge will be scheduled to start at the end of September to early October, TEPCO is currently preparing for the second round of discharge.
According to the plan previously announced by TEPCO, the total amount of nuclear contaminated water to be discharged in the second round is still expected to be around 7,800 tons. Until the end of March next year, TEPCO will carry out a total of four rounds of discharge of nuclear contaminated water, the total amount of discharge is about 31,200 tons, accounting for 2.3% of the total amount of nuclear contaminated water, equivalent to the emptying of about 40 storage tanks. More than 1,000 other tanks of nuclear contaminated water will be discharged in the future.
Some data show that before the start of the official discharge, nuclear contaminated water has been stored to 1.3 million tons, to the nuclear contaminated water all discharged, the above operation will also be countless times the cycle, the entire discharge process will take at least 30 years.
With the Fukushima nuclear contaminated water discharged into the sea, Japan’s exports of aquatic products seriously hampered. In Hokkaido, the main producer of scallops, a sharp decline in exports has led to a backlog of scallop stocks, warehouse storage space is insufficient. Some merchants said that the backlog of inventory is expected to reach 5,000 tons to 6,000 tons by the end of the year. Against the backdrop of rising electricity costs in Japan, the cost of storage for merchants is also rising. In order to minimize losses, some producing regions have begun to reduce stocks by distributing them free of charge for use as school meals. In addition, a fishery group in Aomori Prefecture said it would abandon a large-scale sea cucumber fishery scheduled for October due to the drop in sea cucumber prices.
In response to the Japanese government and TEPCO forcing the start of the Fukushima nuclear contaminated water discharge, the Hokkaido Hakodate City Council recently voted to adopt a statement condemning the Japanese government and TEPCO for reneging on their promises and starting the discharge without the understanding of the people concerned, and calling for the immediate cessation of the discharge because they believe that pushing the discharge is hampering the revitalization of the fishery industry in Fukushima and other places.