TEPCO, which has made public the site of the undersea tunnel construction project, says that the project is proceeding smoothly without local consent for the discharge of treated water into the ocean
September 6, 2022
On September 6, TEPCO opened to the media the construction site of an undersea tunnel that will be used to purify and treat contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Okuma and Futaba towns, Fukushima Prefecture) for discharge into the ocean. Excavation of the tunnel began on August 4 and has progressed to about 80 meters out of its total length of about 1 kilometer. The plan is to finish all the work by next spring, but it is not clear whether the tunnel will actually be able to discharge the water.
The low motor noise reverberated as we entered the narrow tunnel. The entrance to the tunnel was about 3 meters in diameter. Beyond that was a gentle descent. The interior was surrounded by white reinforced concrete walls and crowded with piping and equipment. Beyond the tunnel, a shield machine was digging into the bedrock, but we could not see it.
No sound of digging could be heard, and it was quieter than one might imagine. The machine was digging at a rate of two centimeters per minute. When I touched the piping that carried the rock and mud that had been cut out of the machine to the outside, I felt as if hard objects were rolling around inside.
A person in charge at the site said, “So far, work is going well.” A total of about 100 people work a day on a 24-hour shift, and digging will begin around the end of October at two to three times the current pace.
The fishermen’s union has promised that they will not dispose of the waste in any way (discharge into the ocean) without the understanding of the concerned parties. The fishermen’s union has maintained its opposition to ocean discharge and may not be able to discharge the waste even after the tunnel construction is completed. Kenichi Takahara, risk communicator for the Fukushima Daiichi Decommissioning Promotion Company, predicted, “I think the release will only happen when both the construction of safe facilities and efforts to gain understanding can be accomplished.
According to TEPCO’s plan, the treated water, which mainly contains radioactive tritium, will be diluted with a large amount of seawater to less than 1/40th of the national emission standard and released from the seafloor at a depth of about 12 meters through a tunnel. （The water will be discharged from the seafloor at a depth of about 12 meters through a tunnel.)
TEPCO announced the start of construction of an undersea tunnel to discharge “treated water” from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Citizens’ exclamations
https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/200483?fbclid=IwAR3EwrzzVYJ7mmUU8jDVrK4yn3oZ1loFk6NsmNBvZJilmvH31L0E8XErkeU
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