Tokyo, 16 July, /AJMEDIA/
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will seek to meet the head of Japan’s national fisheries federation, possibly in late July, in order to pitch the government’s plan of releasing treated radioactive water from the disaster-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant, a government source said Saturday.
The meeting will be part of a series of steps the government is taking to determine when to begin releasing the water into the Pacific Ocean.
So far, the government has only committed to doing so sometime “around the summer,” as concerns linger among fishermen about the potentially adverse impact the discharge could have on their businesses.
Masanobu Sakamoto, the head of the national federation of fisheries cooperatives, known as JF Zengyoren, has maintained his group’s opposition to the water discharge, deemed an essential step in ongoing cleanup efforts at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was hit by a massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami in 2011.
But after meeting with Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura on Friday, Sakamoto said he was able to “acknowledge to some extent the scientific safety” of the plan.
The Japanese government is gearing up to discharge the water after the International Atomic Energy Agency released a comprehensive report in early July which said the plan is “consistent” with international safety standards and assessed the discharge will have a “negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.”
Kishida is likely to have come to the conclusion that direct talks with Sakamoto could serve as a chance to extract some concessions from him.
The government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. made a promise in 2015 to Fukushima’s fishermen that they will not dispose of the treated water without securing the “understanding” of all stakeholders.
Kishida is likely to tell Sakamoto that the government will take measures to ensure that the plan is safe, and to address rumors about the safety of fishery products head on. He will also likely emphasize that the governments of the United States and South Korea are not opposed to the plan.
The meeting will not take place before Wednesday, when Kishida is set to return from his trip to the Middle East.
Speculation is growing that water discharge procedures could begin in August, as the prime minister has a busy diplomatic schedule in the following month.
Massive amounts of radioactive water have been generated in the process of cooling melted reactor fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex.
The water is treated at a processing facility to remove most of the contaminants, except tritium, and stored in tanks installed on the premises. But the tanks are nearing capacity and it is feared the continuing buildup of water could hamper the reactor decommissioning progress unless it is dumped into the sea.
