Inspection leader aims to 'reassure' public about Fukushima

Yoo Guk-hee, chairman of the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, answers questions from reporters at Incheon International Airport before departing for Japan on Sunday. [YONHAP]

The chief of the Korean team inspecting the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said Sunday that the group would seek to "reassure" Koreans about Japan's decision to discharge treated radioactive water from the site through their trip.

The inspection is to be conducted independently by a Korean team and follows from a summit between President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida earlier this month.

Yoo Guk-hee, who chairs Korea’s Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, told reporters at Incheon International Airport before departing for Japan that he expects the Korean public to trust the team’s findings if the group “undertakes a scientific approach to fully explain what we saw and what we need to check further.”

The team that left for Japan Sunday consists of 19 experts from the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety and one from the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology, in addition to Yoo.

Regarding the inspection team members, Yoo said, “They have decades of experience in regulating safety with regards to nuclear radiation and nuclear power plant facilities,” adding that they “know more about this field than anyone else.”

Yoo also emphasized that the Korean inspectors have been involved in reviewing the safety of Japan’s plan to release contaminated water from the Fukushima power plant since August 2021 and that they “will thoroughly check” Japan’s methods for purifying and treating radioactive water over four days from Monday to Thursday.

The team is scheduled to confirm which aspects of the water treatment process it will inspect in a meeting on Monday with representatives from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), which runs the plant.

They will then visit Fukushima on Tuesday to examine the plant’s Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) and evaluate the results of water purification through ALPS.

The team is also scheduled to visit the chemical analysis building that analyzes contaminated water on Wednesday, followed by a meeting with Japanese experts on Thursday, when the Korean team is expected to request technical data.

“Since we have a team of the finest experts, we will check on the safety of the process based on the soundness of its science without bias,” Yoo said.

Commissioned in 1971, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was crippled after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami in 2011 damaged the plant’s reactor cooling systems, leading to the release of large amounts of radiation and triggering a 30-kilometer (19-mile) evacuation zone surrounding the plant.

The plant currently stores over 1.3 million tons of ALPS-treated water, which Japanese officials say must be released as part of the plant’s decommissioning process, which is expected to take decades to complete.

Japan announced its plan to gradually release tons of treated radioactive water from the defunct power plant into the sea in 2021, drawing strong opposition from fishing communities at home and abroad.

Tepco has said that all radioactive materials have been removed from the water except tritium, which experts say is not harmful to human health in small amounts.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has supported the plan.

The agency is currently conducting an ongoing investigation into the plant’s discharge plan and safety protocols.

It has already released five reports and is scheduled to publish its final report in late June.

BY MICHAEL LEE,ESTHER CHUNG [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]