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ONU aprueba descarga de agua radioactiva al mar (1) infographic
El gráfico muestra cómo funciona el sistema de dilución de tritio de Fukushima.
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JAPÓN

La OIEA autoriza a Fukushima verter agua contaminada al Pacífico

By Ninian Carter

June 10, 2022 - El Organismo Internacional de Energía Atómica dice que el plan de Japón de liberar agua residual contaminada de la planta nuclear dañada en Fukushima hacia el Océano Pacífico cumple con los estándares internacionales.

Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has granted initial approval to Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) to release contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

A decade after an earthquake and tsunami wrecked the plant, causing the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, nearly 1.3 million tonnes of contaminated water has accumulated at the site.

The water is stored in around 1,000 huge tanks scattered all over the site, at a maintenance cost of almost $900 million a year – but space is running out.

Tepco plans to filter the irradiated water to remove isotopes, leaving only tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that is impossible to filter out of water.

Tepco plans to then dilute the water until tritium levels fall to less than 1/40th of regulatory standards, before pumping it down a one-kilometre-long pipe into the Pacific Ocean.

The NRA reserves final judgement on the plans until after a public consultation period, but if successful, which seems almost inevitable, the filtration plant will be completed in April 2023 and start discharging the contaminated water in the spring of that year.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 05/07/2023; STORY: Graphic News
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