At a small section of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's central control room in northeastern Japan, the treated water transfer switch is on. A graph on a computer monitor nearby shows a steady decrease of water levels as treated radioactive wastewater is diluted and released into the Pacific Ocean.
In the coastal area of the plant, two seawater pumps are in action, gushing torrents of seawater through sky blue pipes into the big header where the treated water, which comes down through a much thinner black pipe from the hilltop tanks, gets diluted by hundreds of times before the release.
For the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi, managing the ever-growing volume of radioactive wastewater held in more than 1,000 tanks has been a safety risk and a burden since the meltdown in March 2011. Its release marks a milestone for the decommissioning of the plant, which is expected to take decades. They say the water is treated and diluted to levels that are safer than international standards, and so far, test results by TEPCO andfound radioactivity in seawater and fish samples taken after the release were below detectable levels.
The release, which started at the daily pace of 460 tons, is moving slowly. TEPCO says it plans to release 31,200 tons of treated water by the end of March 2024, which would empty only 10 tanks out of 1,000 because of the continued production of theThe pace will later pick up and about 1/3 of the tanks will be removed over the next 10 years, freeing up space for the plant's decommissioning, said TEPCO executive Junichi Matsumoto, who is in charge of the treated water release.
Inside the worst-hit Unit 1, most of its reactor core melted and fell to the bottom of the primary containment chamber and possibly farther into the concrete basement. A robotic probe sent inside the Unit 1 primary containment chamber has found that its pedestal—the main supporting structure directly under its core- was extensively damaged.
This photo taken during the tour of the treated water dilution and discharge facility for foreign media shows TEPCO official Kenichi Takahara explains about a facility to take samples of treated radioactive wastewater after dilution for testing before release, part of the facility for the releasing treated radioactive water to sea from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings , in Futaba town, northeastern Japan, Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023.
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