TEPCO has completed seawater injection into the Fukushima nuclear contaminated water discharge tunnel | underwater tunnel | TEPCO
Tokyo, June 6th (Xinhua) - Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, said on June 6th that the operation of injecting seawater into the underwater tunnel used for discharging nuclear contaminated water had ended in the morning of the same day, and all related projects were expected to be completed by the end of June.
The underwater tunnel built for the discharge of contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is approximately 1 kilometer long. Construction officially began in August 2022 and excavation work was completed in late April of this year.
According to media reports from the Japan Broadcasting Association Television and Fukushima Broadcasting Corporation Television on the 6th, after cleaning and removing equipment and materials from the tunnel, Tokyo Electric Power Company began injecting seawater into the underwater tunnel from the afternoon of the 5th, and completed the injection operation of about 6000 tons of seawater around 5pm local time on the 6th.
The report states that the discharge mechanism of underwater tunnels is to transport the diluted nuclear contaminated water discharged from land to the offshore drainage outlet through a tunnel filled with seawater. Tokyo Electric Power Company stated that there are still some emission related facilities that have not been completed, such as tanks for temporary water storage before discharge, and plans to complete the entire project by the end of June.
The Japanese government officially decided on April 13, 2021 to filter and dilute millions of tons of contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant before discharging it into the sea. Despite strong opposition from Japanese fishing groups and some local officials, as well as strong opposition and questioning from neighboring countries such as China and South Korea, the Japanese government still ignores the opposition. In January 2023, the Japanese government set the discharge time for Fukushima nuclear contaminated water as "this spring and summer".