Three Years of Discharging “Processed Water” into the Sea

It has been three years since Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) started discharging “processed water,” which means allegedly purified radioactive water, from crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) into the Pacific Ocean. Although TEPCO kept on making effort of increasing water to be discharged, the stock of contaminated water has been reduced by 7 percent. It is estimated that the tanks with contaminated water will not be empty by the targeted year of 2051. 

FDNPP lost its electricity when it was soaked in seawater of tsunami woken by East Japan Great Earthquake on March 11, 2011. Reactors #1, #3 and #4 had hydrogen explosion and meltdown of nuclear fuel occurred in reactors #1, #2 and #3. TEPCO, with advice of the government of Japan, decided to cool down the radioactive debris with water, which would produce contaminated water.

 

While it stocked that water in 1,046 of tanks built on the FDNPP site, it increased to a limit. Then, it started discharging the water, after processing to remove radioactive substances through a device called Advanced Liquid Processing System, into the sea in August 2023. As one of the radioactive materials, tritium, cannot be completely removed, the discharging faced firm protest from Japanese fishermen and neighbor countries in Asia-Pacific region.

 

The diluted water was discharged for 22 times with an amount of 170 thousand metric tons in these three years. While TEPCO had 1.34 million tons of contaminated water in the tanks just before starting discharging, it was reduced by 100 thousand tons to 1.24 tons. 70 thousand tons of newly contaminated water was added to the tanks in these three years, because rains and underground water touched on the debris.

 

Whether the sea was maintained to be safe is the biggest question to the project of discharging processed water. The total amount of released tritium remaining in the processed water was 29 trillion becquerels. In the monitoring of seawater offshore FDNPP, 61 becquerels in one liter of tritium was detected. TEPCO says that the concentration of tritium was ten times lower than the regulatory standard.

 

This explanation has not fully been understood. Protesting discharge of “contaminated” water, China immediately introduced embargo of sea products from Japan. Although it eased the restriction, it resumed it in November 2025, when hawkish and anti-China Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took her seat. Takaichi has not been successful in improving deteriorated bilateral relations, after she made careless speech on Taiwan contingency in the same month.

 

As long as huge tanks are not removed from the site, the effort for decommissioning crippled reactors cannot be accelerated. The government of Japan and TEPCO has a plan to finish the discharging by 2051, this pace cannot be catch up with that goal. It is the consequence of a severe accident in major nuclear power plant.

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