TOKYO: The UN nuclear watchdog chief arrives in Japan on Tuesday for a trip that will include his first visit to storage facilities for soil contaminated in the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
\nIt is the fifth official visit to the country by Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
\nThe organization is monitoring the decades-long process to decommission the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which went into meltdown after being hit by a tsunami in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
\nWorkers at the wrecked plant on Japan\u2019s northeast coast last week began dismantling wastewater storage tanks to free up space for tons of nuclear debris.
\nGrossi will tour the site on Wednesday, and will also be shown the contaminated soil that the government is currently discussing how to handle.
\nAfter the disaster, about 13 million cubic meters of soil and about 300,000 cubic meters of ash from the incineration of organic material was removed from the wider Fukushima region, as part of decontamination efforts.
\nFor comparison, the Tokyo Dome arena, where US pop superstar Taylor Swift performed last year, has a capacity of 1.24 million cubic meters.
\nThe soil is being kept at interim storage facilities, over a total area of 16 square kilometers (six square miles).
\nJapan plans to recycle roughly 75 percent of the removed soil \u2014 the portion found to have low radioactivity levels.
\nIf this material is confirmed safe, authorities want to use it for civil engineering projects, including building embankments for roads and railways, the government and the IAEA say.
\nThe remaining soil will be disposed of outside Fukushima region ahead of a 2045 deadline.
\nThe government has said it intends to confirm the disposal site this year, with Fukushima\u2019s regional governor reportedly urging them to come up with a plan quickly.
\n\u201cJapan\u2019s approach for recycling and disposing of soil and radioactive waste from decontamination activities… is consistent with IAEA safety standards,\u201d the IAEA said in September in its final report on the soil issue.
\nThe Fukushima plant was hit by a huge earthquake-triggered tsunami in March 2011 that killed 18,000 people.
\nThe most dangerous part of the complex Fukushima plant clean-up \u2014 removing around 880 tons of radioactive fuel and rubble from three stricken reactors \u2014 has only just begun, with one tiny sample removed by a robotic claw.
\nDuring Grossi\u2019s visit, experts from the IAEA and neighboring countries including China and South Korea will also take seawater and fish samples \u201cto further increase the transparency\u201d of the process of releasing treated wastewater into the sea, an official from Japan\u2019s energy agency said.
\nPlant operator TEPCO in August 2023 began discharging 1.3 million tons of collected groundwater, seawater and rainwater, along with water used for cooling the reactors.
\nThe water release has been endorsed by the IAEA, and TEPCO says all radioactive elements have been filtered out except for tritium, levels of which are within safe limits.
\nBut countries including China and Russia have criticized the release and banned Japanese seafood imports over safety concerns.
\nChina in September said it would \u201cgradually resume\u201d importing seafood from Japan but this has yet to begin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TOKYO: The UN nuclear watchdog chief arrives in Japan on Tuesday for a trip that will include his first visit to storage facilities for soil contaminated in the 2011 Fukushima disaster. It is the fifth official visit to the country by Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The organization is monitoring …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77240,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77216\/revisions\/77240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}