Government holds first daily Fukushima briefing

Social Affairs

Published: 15 Jun. 2023, 18:10 Updated: 15 Jun. 2023, 19:37

Government holds first daily Fukushima briefing

A vendor at Noryangjin Fisheries Wholesale Market in Dongjak District, southern Seoul lays out seafood at her stall on Thursday. The National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives launched an event in collaboration with seafood suppliers, vendors and consumer groups at the market the same day, urging people to continue buying seafood despite contamination fears. [YONHAP]

The government on Thursday held its first daily press briefing on the release of treated radioactive water from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan to assuage public safety concerns.

The daily briefings are intended to update the public about water released from the power plant as the trial operation of its discharge facility begins.

“We will closely monitor the [discharge] process and provide explanations of any unusual occurrences,” said Park Ku-yeon, the first deputy director of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, a government agency under the Prime Minister’s Office.

Park said that the current ongoing trial will only test the operation of a few components of the discharge facility, such as the marine tunnel and various pipes, rather than the entire water release system.

A team of South Korean experts traveled to Japan in May to conduct an inspection of the plant’s water treatment, testing and discharge facilities to see if the treated radioactive water is safe for release into the ocean.

The inspection followed an agreement between President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during the latter’s visit to Seoul earlier that month.

The Korean inspection team said Japan and the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, had achieved progress in treating the radioactive water from the plant, but said that additional analysis was required to reach a more accurate conclusion concerning the water’s safety for release.

Park said the team is currently reviewing additional data provided by Japan, including information regarding the plant’s water purification system, also known as the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS).

In response to a question concerning a recent media report that ALPS-treated water still contained over 20,000 times the amount of radioactive strontium considered safe by international standards, Park said that Japan maintains a policy of treating radioactive water from the plant until it meets international standards.

Experts on the Korean government task force have said the level of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, in the water released from the plant does not pose a risk to human health.

ALPS treatment is capable of removing all radioactive isotopes from the plant’s discharge except tritium.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant was severely damaged by the tsunami unleashed by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake that struck northeastern Japan in 2011.

The tsunami flooded the plant’s reactor buildings, causing a loss of power to the pumps circulating coolant to the reactors cores, leading to three nuclear meltdowns, three hydrogen explosions, and the release of radioactive contamination that forced the Japanese government to implement a 20-kilometer (12-mile) exclusion zone.

The Fukushima nuclear meltdown is ranked by the International Nuclear Event Scale as the second-most severe nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.

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