The Kyodo News reports that Japanese fisheries agencies have stated that no radioactive isotopes of tritium were detected in fish tested in the waters surrounding the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Last Thursday, the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, began discharging treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. This move has angered Japanese fishermen and many others, shocked consumers in neighboring countries, and prompted nations including China to ban imports of Japanese aquatic products.
Tokyo Electric Power Company claims that the tritium levels in the seawater near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station are below 10 becquerels per liter — not only well below the company’s self-imposed limit of 700 becquerels but also far below the World Health Organization's drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per liter. The company has stated that it will continue to publish test results daily for the foreseeable future.
After lengthy debate and with storage space nearly exhausted, the government led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida decided last Tuesday to allow the release of 1.3 million tons of nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima plant, which was destroyed by the tsunami in 2011.
Despite claims from multiple organizations that Tokyo Electric Power Company’s facilities have filtered out most of the radioactive material from the water, many countries note that tritium is a form of hydrogen that is difficult to separate from water.
Since Tokyo Electric Power Company decided to discharge the nuclear wastewater into the Pacific, several countries and regions in Asia have strongly protested this action, with some immediately imposing import bans on Japanese aquatic products.
