On Thursday, China criticized Japan’s wastewater release from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean as “extremely selfish and irresponsible.”
Earlier on Thursday, Japan started releasing the treated wasted water from the stricken plant in a process it urges is secure but has provoked a severe backlash from China.
International Atomic Energy Agency considered Japan’s Fukushima water release as “safe”, but China has barred food imports from 10 Japanese prefectures, with Hong Kong following suit.
China’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the ocean is the common property of all humankind, and forcibly beginning the release of Fukushima’s nuclear wastewater into the ocean is an incredibly selfish and careless action that overlooks international public interests.
It added that Tokyo didn’t prove the legality of the procedure or the long-term reliability of the nuclear wastewater cleansing equipment.
Japan also did not prove the authenticity and accuracy of the nuclear wastewater data, and did not demonstrate that ocean release is harmless to the marine environment and human health, the statement added.
In 2011, the Fukushima-Daiichi facility’s three reactors in northeastern Japan went into meltdown following a tremendous earthquake and tsunami that caused 18,000 lives.
Since then, TEPCO, the plant operator, has gathered 1.34 million cubic meters of water contaminated as it cooled the wrecked reactors, along with ground water and rain that has seeped in.
The start of the release of around 540 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of water over several decades is a major step in decommissioning the still highly dangerous site.
