The Japanese government has said it will start releasing contaminated water from the nuclear power plant devastated by a tsunami in 2011, into the Pacific Ocean sometime “around this spring or summer”.
The plan has been endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but the government said it would wait for "a comprehensive report" by the UN watchdog before the release.
In March 2011, a large undersea quake off the coast of Japan triggered a massive tsunami. At the time, three of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were in operation. When the huge waves flooded the backup generators, the cooling systems failed, causing the reactors to go into meltdown.
Every day, the plant produces 100m³ of contaminated water, which is a mixture of groundwater, seawater and water used to keep the reactors cool since the meltdown.
The water is then filtered to remove various radionuclides and moved to storage tanks....