IAEA team gathers marine samples near Fukushima

Iwaki: A member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team visiting Fukushima for its first marine sampling since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant started releasing treated radioactive wastewater into the sea said Thursday he does not expect any rise in radiation levels in the fish caught in the regional seas.

The IAEA team watched flounder and other popular kinds of fish

being caught off the coast earlier Thursday and brought on boats to the Hisanohama port in southern Fukushima for an auction.

“I can say that we don’t expect to see any change starting in the fish,” said Paul McGinnity, an IAEA marine radiology scientist.

A small rise in the levels of tritium, which cannot be removed from the Fukushima Daiichi wastewater by the plant’s treatment system called ALPS, is possible in locations close to the discharge points, but the levels of radioactivity are expected to be similar to those measured before the discharge last year, he said.

Fukushima Daiichi started releasing wastewater into the sea on August 24. The release, which is expected to continue for decades, has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and neighbouring countries including South Korea, where hundreds of people have protested.

China immediately banned all imports of Japanese seafood the day the release began, badly hurting Japanese seafood producers, processors and exporters, and Russia recently joined China in the trade restrictions.

The Japanese government asked the IAEA to conduct the environmental and fish sampling to build confidence about the data

that Japan provides amid scepticism in some IAEA member states, McGinnity said without identifying which

countries.