Discharge from nuclear facility in Japan safe – Test

The Fukushima nuclear plant’s operator asserts that the seawater in the vicinity of the facility poses no danger.

Tepco, the company in Japan, announced their testing results one day after they let out treated contaminated water. This water comes from a plant that got destroyed by a tsunami in 2011.

The waste released into the Pacific Ocean has caused people to protest and angered Beijing.

Japan advised its people residing in China to behave inconspicuously on Friday, which includes speaking softly in public.

“When you go out, try to be careful and avoid speaking Japanese loudly when it’s not necessary,” advised the Japanese embassy in Beijing. It also advised people to be careful and aware of the area around the embassy if they are planning to visit.

Japan’s consulate in Hong Kong, which is under Chinese rule, has issued a notice about upcoming protests regarding the water release. This comes after around 100 people expressed their objections by protesting on the streets last Thursday.

Chinese officials criticized Japan’s choice to release the water, calling it very selfish and irresponsible, even though the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has given the plan its approval.

Beijing, which buys a lot of seafood from Japan, stopped importing seafood from Japan after the water was released.

People are buying a lot of sea salt because they’re afraid it might become unsafe to use in the future.

China’s largest salt producer, the government-owned National Salt Industry Group, announced that it was increasing the amount of salt available because some people in certain areas of the country were rushing to buy more salt after the water was released.

However, Tepco stated that the levels of radioactivity in samples of seawater taken on Thursday afternoon were not causing harm and were considered safe.

“We have verified that the measured amount is the same as the calculated concentration and it is less than 1,500 bq/L,” said Tepco spokesperson Keisuke Matsuo during a press conference.

Becquerels per litre, also known as bq/L, is a way of measuring how radioactive something is. The safety standard for the country is 60,000.

Mr Matsuo said that the results were like our previous simulation and below the safety limit.

He said Tepco will keep analyzing every day for the next month and even after that, they will continue to analyze.

Japan’s environment ministry collected samples of seawater from 11 places on Friday. They will share the results on Sunday.

Over the next 30 years, more than a million tonnes of water stored at Fukushima will be released or let out.

Since 2011, Tepco has been adding water to cool down the parts that are left from three reactors. The dirty water is cleaned and kept in over 1,000 big tanks.

The person in charge of the plant said that the water has been cleaned to remove all radioactive substances except for tritium, and it is now considered safe.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Thursday that the samples taken from the first amount of water that was made less strong to be discharged showed that the tritium levels were very safe.

Many scientists agree, but a group called Greenpeace, which focuses on the environment, says that the filtration process (called ALPS) does not work. They believe that a large amount of harmful radiation will be released into the ocean.