hankyoreh

Contaminated water is currently being stored in roughly 1,000 tanks located at the Fukushima Daiichi site. (Yonhap News)

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) requested approval to revise its implementation plan for releasing contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean before the release of a final report assessing the radiological impact of releasing the water, the Hankyoreh learned on Tuesday.

According to Japan’s Kyodo News, TEPCO submitted proposed revisions to its implementation plan for releasing the contaminated water to Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority and asked the agency to review the proposal on Tuesday. The implementation plan details the methods of installing and operating the equipment necessary for releasing contaminated water from the nuclear plant, an analysis of the density of the contaminated water, and the methods of acquiring and releasing water for diluting the contaminated water.

TEPCO published a rough draft of a report containing a radiological impact assessment of the contaminated water at Fukushima on Nov. 17 and said it would publish the final report after collecting opinions from other groups through Dec. 18.

After reviewing the rough draft, international environmental group Greenpeace told TEPCO on Dec. 16 that the company’s radiological impact assessment of the contaminated water involved a convenient reading of International Atomic Energy Agency guidelines without considering the potential harm to residents of neighboring countries such as South Korea.

The final version of the report, which is supposed to be supplemented with such outside opinions, hasn’t been released yet. In short, TEPCO asked for approval of its revised implementation plan before the final report assessing the impact of releasing the water had come out.

South Korea’s Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) expressed its concerns in a letter that it sent to Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority on Tuesday as Japan races through procedural steps to meet its schedule of releasing the contaminated water in the spring of 2023.

In an emergency briefing the same day, NSSC Chairperson Yoo Guk-hee said, “In connection with the Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority announcing a review timeline of 4.5 months at an International Atomic Energy Agency conference on the 10th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in November, we requested that it conduct an adequate review from a scientific and technical standpoint without adhering to a deadline, as the prior designation of a deadline for a review by an independent regulatory institution could create the misunderstanding that the direction of the review outcome has already been determined.”

“There are too many areas in which Japan has overridden protocols connected with handling the Fukushima accident. Considering that the radiological impact assessment report is a technical document running for more than 160 pages, only allowing a month for canvassing opinions was extremely perfunctory,” said Mari Chang, an energy campaigner for Greenpeace.

TEPCO is taking steps to begin diluting the contaminated water from Fukushima and releasing it into the ocean as early as the spring of 2023 according to a decision reached by the Japanese government this past April. The amount of contaminated water being stored in tanks on the grounds of the Fukushima plant continues to increase, adding up to 1,286,493 tons as of Dec. 16.

By Kim Jeong-su, senior staff writer

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