Protesters gathered in the capital of South Korea on Saturday to demand that the government take steps to avoid what they fear is a looming disaster from Japan’s release of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Japan began dumping the water from the plant north of Tokyo into the sea on Thursday despite objections both at home and abroad from fishing communities and others worried about the environmental impact.
“We will not be immediately seeing disasters like detecting radioactive materials in seafood but it seems inevitable that this discharge would pose a risk to the local fishing industry and the government needs to come up with solutions,” said Choi Kyoungsook of the Korea Radiation Watch group that organised the rally.
About 50,000 people joined the protest, according to the organisers.
Japan and scientific organisations say the water, distilled after being contaminated by contact with fuel rods when the reactor was destroyed in a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, is safe.
The utility responsible for the plant, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has been filtering the water to remove isotopes, leaving only tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that is hard to separate.
Japan’s fisheries agency said on Saturday that fish tested in waters around the plant did not contain detectable levels of tritium, Kyodo news service reported.
Nets were set up on Thursday when Tepco began releasing treated radioactive water into the Pacific, angering fishermen and many others in Japan, alarming consumers in neighbouring countries and prompting China to ban Japanese aquatic products.
The agency plans to announce test results daily.
Tepco said on Friday that seawater near the plant contained less than 10 becquerels of tritium per litre, below its self-imposed limit of 700 becquerels and far below the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s limit of 10,000 becquerels for drinking water.
Calls to the fisheries agency for comment were not answered on Saturday.
South Korea has said it sees no scientific problems with the water release but environmental activists argue that all possible impacts have not been studied.
“Nobody can tell what’s going to happen to the marine ecosystem in the next 100 years,” said Choi.
Japan says it needs to start releasing the water as storage tanks holding about 1.3mn metric tonnes of it – enough to fill 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools – are full.
The first discharge of 7,800cu m – equivalent to about three Olympic pools – will take place over about 17 days. – Reuters
Activists hold placards reading ‘We are against contaminated water that kills whales’ (left) and ‘Store it on land’ as they take part in a rally in Seoul against Japan’s discharge of treated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.
