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At an Aug. 23 protest of Japan’s plan to dump contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean, Hong Kong fishers pour water marked “nuclear wastewater” onto a photo of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. (EPA/Yonhap)

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) spent all of Wednesday busy on preparations after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s decision to begin dumping around 1.34 million metric tons of contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant on Thursday.

Kishida described the water’s release as being necessary for the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant.

Japanese news outlets said it was impossible to predict whether the water’s release will be completed within a period of “around 30 years,” as the Japanese government and TEPCO have claimed. They also shared dire predictions that rushing irresponsibly into the process without measures in place to prevent new water contamination or clear projections for the reactors’ decommissioning could leave Japan in a situation where it is effectively “pouring water into a sieve.”

Kyodo News reported on Wednesday that the Japanese government and TEPCO were “coordinating to begin the release of treated water at 1 pm on Aug. 24.” On Thursday, they were set to start dumping 460 tons of contaminated water per day, for a total of 7,800 metric tons over a 17-day period.

The plan for the rest of the year consists of a total of four releases, involving the discharge of 31,200 metric tons in all, or roughly 2.3% of the entire amount of contaminated water.

TEPCO explained that it was “proceeding cautiously, as this is the first year” of the water’s discharge.

People carrying banners and signs with messages of opposition to Japan’s plan to release wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean rally outside the prime minister’s office in Tokyo on Aug. 22. (AFP/Yonhap)

On Tuesday evening, the company finished work on transporting water into pre-release tanks following its dilution through the mixture with 1,200 metric tons of seawater for every metric ton of contaminated water.

Japanese media voiced profound concerns over the inability of anyone to predict when the discharge will be completed.

The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has developed a three-stage nuclear power plant decommissioning plan. The first stage, which involves removing the nuclear fuel stored at the plant, is to begin in the next two years.

The second stage — the biggest hurdle in the decommissioning process — involves the removal of the mass of debris formed by the nuclear fuel responsible for the meltdown and the surrounding structure. According to the plan, that process is to start within the next 10 years.

The third stage would be the full-scale dismantling of the reactors, with the decommissioning process to be completed between 2041 and 2051 — roughly 30 to 40 years after the initial accident. Any additional contaminated water that is generated in the process will also have to be dumped into the ocean.

“Nobody expects the decommissioning process to be completed in 30 to 40 years,” an official in charge of core aspects of the Japanese administration’s atomic energy policy said in an interview that day with the commercial network Nippon TV.

The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper was also critical of the administrations’ response, concluding that the target of completing the decommissioning by 2051 has “virtually collapsed.”

Currently, around 880 metric tons of debris remains present at the Fukushima nuclear power plant’s first through third reactors. The radioactivity there is at such a high dose rate that a human being who approached it would be dead within an hour. The removal process would require the operation of robots carrying out high-precision work, but their development has been slow going.

The Asahi Shimbun reported that “debris removal from the No. 2 reactor was scheduled to begin in 2021 but has been delayed twice.”

The newspaper added that while the current target is to begin work in the second half of 2023, the “amount removed will be little more than a few grams.” No plans are in place at all for the disposal timeline and methods for the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors.

Japan plans to release into the ocean the 1.33 million metric tons of radioactive water stored in tanks, shown here, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant over the course of 30 years. (Reuters/Yonhap)

No measures are available to fully prevent contaminated water from being produced on a day basis by rainfall and inflows of underground water either.

Previously, underground water was drawn up to form an ice-soil wall around reactors No. 1-No. 4, but around 90 to 140 metric tons of new contaminated water is still generated each day. If the decommissioning process is delayed, the release of contaminated water could end up turning into a bottomless pit.

Nippon TV explained that the Japanese government’s initial prediction for the discharge period was “around 7.5 years.”

“That has since been substantially extended to ‘30 years’ or ‘at least 30 years,’” it observed.

By Kim So-youn, Tokyo correspondent

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