Daegu Mayor Hong Joon-pyo, who is a member of the ruling People Power Party (PPP), has urged the government to protest Japan’s plan to discharge radioactive wastewater from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

“Korea will not agree with Japan’s plan. Korea shouldn’t do that,” Hong wrote on Facebook, Sunday. “The plan is a separate issue from the economic and security alliance between Korea, the United States and Japan. The issue is related to the health of people around the globe.”

Beginning later this month, the Japanese government is expected to start releasing into the Pacific Ocean water containing tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which was devastated by a tsunami triggered by an earthquake in March 2011.

Hong, who ran in the presidential election in 2017 under the flag of the conservative Liberty Korea Party, the predecessor of the PPP, claimed Japan’s export of marine products will become impossible if the country pushes ahead with its discharge plan, despite opposition from neighbouring countries.

“Japan should know that no country will want to import its marine products,” he wrote. “Pushing ahead with the plan will eventually harm Japan itself.”

The Fukushima plant, on the east coast of Japan, holds an estimated 1.25 million tonnes of contaminated water in more than 1,000 tanks.

Though Japan said powerful filters would remove all radioactive substances except tritium, which it says is harmless to humans in small doses, the discharge plan has invited fierce protest from opposition parties, some civic groups and fishermen in Korea. The Yoon Suk Yeol administration and the PPP maintained a position that the government would not be able to stop the plan if the scientific analysis of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the government’s inspection team finds no problems.

The Yoon administration dispatched a 21-member delegation to Japan last month to conduct an on-site inspection at the plant.

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2023/06/356_352742.html

Category: Korea