The Japanese government is campaigning to win support for a plan to pump more than a million tonnes of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.
Although the government of the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has not formally announced the plan, it has become increasingly clear that it intends to go ahead with a step that will provoke anger and anxiety both in Japan and among the country’s east Asian neighbours.
Diplomats in Tokyo were briefed today on “options” for solving one of the biggest problems caused by the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima plant. But the briefing, like a committee report last week, concluded that other methods of disposing of the water, such as evaporation, were impracticable.
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Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist the Green Peace's German office, has previously called on Japanese authorities to "commit to the only environmentally acceptable option for managing this water crisis, which is long-term storage and processing to remove radioactivity, including tritium."