TEPCO says the water undergoes five processing stages of co-sedimentation, adsorption and physical filtration.
The power-station operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), so far has used what it describes as an advanced liquid-processing system (ALPS) to treat the water.
The contaminated water has been collected, treated to reduce the radioactive content and stored in more than 1,000 stainless steel tanks at the site. But others take longer to decay carbon-14, for example, has a half-life of more than 5,000 years. Some of these radionuclides have a relatively short half-life and would already have decayed in the 12 years since the disaster. Of greatest concern are those that could pose a threat to human health: carbon-14, iodine-131, caesium-137, strontium-90, cobalt-60 and hydrogen-3, also known as tritium.
Since then, more than 1.3 million cubic metres of seawater have been sprayed onto the damaged cores to keep them from overheating, contaminating the water with 64 radioactive elements, known as radionuclides. The power station exploded after a devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami crippled the coastal plant, overheating the reactor cores.
But just how safe is the water to the marine environment and humans across the Pacific region? How is the water contaminated? Starting sometime this year and continuing for the next 30 years, Japan will slowly release treated water stored in tanks at the site into the ocean through a pipeline extending one kilometre from the coast. Credit: Kimimasa Mayama/AFP via Gettyĭespite concerns from several nations and international groups, Japan is pressing ahead with plans to release water contaminated by the 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. A TEPCO representative measures radiation levels around the treated water storage tanks in 2018.
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