Daily Times

The Japanese government will make a decision on Tuesday about the release of treated water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, a government minister said. “We would like to hold a meeting of the relevant ministers tomorrow (Tuesday) in order to make a decision on the commencement of the water release after confirming the status of efforts to ensure safety and to address reputational damage,” Yasutoshi Nishimura, the economy, trade and industry minister, told a news conference on Monday.

“Relevant ministers will discuss and share information on what next steps should be taken, and based on these discussions, we would like to make a decision about the timing,” he said. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Sunday during a visit to the nuclear power plant, where three reactors went into meltdown in 2011, that no date had been set. Around 1.34 million tonnes of water, equivalent to more than 500 Olympic swimming pools, have accumulated since the Fukushima plant was knocked out by an earthquake and tsunami that killed 18,000 people in 2011. Plant operator TEPCO says that with around 1,000 steel tanks now full of water, space has run out and that it wants to gradually start discharging the water into the Pacific Ocean via an underwater pipe. TEPCO says that dangerous radioactive elements have been filtered out and that the water it plans to release is safe, a view backed by the UN atomic agency.