(Daily Mail) – Japan may decide to dump radioactive water from the Fukushima power plant into the Pacific Ocean. Diplomats from 22 countries and regions attended a briefing at the Foreign Ministry where Japanese officials stressed the importance of combating rumors about safety at the plant. Fukushima was decimated by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami and was the most catastrophic nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said last month that it would run out
of storage space for the water by 2022, prompting South Korea to raise safety questions amid tensions with Japan. Water must be continuously pumped into the four melted reactors at the plant so the fuel inside can be kept cool, and radioactive water has leaked from the reactors and mixed with groundwater and rainwater since the disaster. The plant has accumulated more than 1million tonnes of water in nearly 1,000 tanks. The water has been treated but still contains some radioactive elements. One, tritium – a relative of radiation-emitting hydrogen – cannot be separated. READ MORE
