IAEA Director Rafael Grossi is visiting South Korea today. He will meet there today with the South Korean foreign minister and a nuclear representative in an attempt to calm tempers over Japan’s plan to dump treated radioactive water. This writes Reuters.
Grossi had previously been to Japan to look into the possibilities of discharging the polluted water from the Fukushima plant. The international nuclear watchdog IAEA recently approved the plan, which allows Japan to dump polluted water into the ocean.
The South Korean opposition is far from happy with the plan, and there were even fierce demonstrations when Grossi landed. Therefore, Grossi has already attempted to enter into dialogue with the objectors. However, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung does not want to hear about it and has called on South Korean President Yoo Suk Yeol to stop the plan and to refer the matter to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
‘No problem’
The South Korean government has already said it complies with the IAEA investigation report on the discharge, concluding that the discharge of the contaminated water will have “no major impact” on South Korean waters.
Nonetheless, it is a precarious subject for the South Korean government. Where South Korea is busy improving due to its relationship with Tokyo, it seems that it mostly offends its own population when it comes to dumping polluted water. Sea salt, by the way, is crushed en masse. However, the ban on food (products) from the Fukushima region remains.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster
Twelve years ago, the Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred as a result of the great earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan at the time. Since then, water from the sea, land and mountains flows through the site and is polluted. “That’s about sixty liters of water a minute,” says climate and energy journalist Mark Beekhuis, “and they’ve been storing it all this time in nearly a thousand special tanks.”
But those tanks are filling up. There are only about twenty available. Hence the idea of discharging polluted water into the sea. “Much of that water has already been reasonably purified,” says the energy reporter. “Some dangerous particles, such as strontium, have been removed. But tritium is more difficult to separate from water.”
Source: BNR
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