Japan resumes Fukushima treated water release after quake

Tokyo Electric Power Company said the release restarted at around 2:30 pm on Tuesday, following safety inspections prompted by the magnitude 7.5 quake that struck Monday night. The pause was taken as a precaution, with no damage to discharge equipment reported.

The restart continues the facility’s seventeenth planned release cycle, which began on December 4 and is scheduled to run through December 22. During this phase, approximately 7,800 tons of treated water are set to be released into the Pacific Ocean under Japan’s long term disposal program.

Monitoring results indicate that radiation levels remain well within safety standards. Seawater samples taken on December 8 from ten locations within three kilometers of the plant showed tritium levels of 18 becquerels per liter at the closest point about two hundred meters from the outlet.

All other sites registered below the detection limit, generally under 8 becquerels per liter. These readings are far below TEPCO’s operational thresholds of seven hundred becquerels per liter for discharge suspension and 350 for further investigation.

Additional testing within a 10 kilometer radius also detected tritium levels below measurable limits, again well under regulatory benchmarks. Independent monitoring by Japan’s Ministry of the Environment between November 11 and 13 found undetectable tritium concentrations at all surveyed locations off Fukushima and neighboring Ibaraki prefectures. The ministry said the results present no risk to human health or marine ecosystems.

Checks on seafood conducted by the Fisheries Agency on December 5 found that all marine product samples from nearby waters were also below the detection threshold for tritium. Fukushima Prefecture reported similar outcomes from coastal seawater tests conducted in late November.

For reference, background tritium levels in local seawater before the discharges were typically between 0.1 and 1.0 becquerels per liter. The World Health Organization’s drinking water guideline permits up to 10,000 becquerels per liter, a figure far higher than all recorded measurements.

Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that a powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.6 struck northeastern Japan late Monday night, with the meteorological agency issuing a tsunami warning for coastal areas of Hokkaido as well as Aomori and Iwate prefect