A team of Taiwanese experts are to travel to Japan to examine Tokyo’s plans to release contaminated water from the disabled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant into the ocean, the Atomic Energy Council said on Monday.
The team would likely make the trip by the end of this year, council Minister Hsieh Shou-shing (謝曉星) said, adding that Tokyo has agreed to the trip in principle.
The team is similar to an investigative task force led by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that would also investigate Japan’s plans, Hsieh told reporters after briefing lawmakers on the matter at the Legislative Yuan.
Photo: EPA
IAEA officials have the authority to enter the power plant’s premises to inspect the work being conducted there, and the Taiwanese team would carry out an on-site inspection covering the same items on the IAEA’s itinerary, including water release information and monitoring measures, Hsieh said.
Some IAEA representatives have already visited Japan and the agency plans to send its investigative team by the end of the year, he added.
The council has been coordinating with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Taiwan’s representative office in Japan to negotiate the planned visit with Japanese officials, he said.
Japan has announced that it would release more than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water from the crippled power plant into the sea, beginning in about two years.
Tokyo Electric Power Co, which operates the plant, would treat and dilute the contaminated water before discharging it, Japan said.
The filtering process would remove most radioactive elements from the water, leaving only tritium, news media have reported.
The IAEA has come up with a timetable for procedures and measures regarding the release of the water, and the council would map out its plan in line with the IAEA’s timetable, despite Taiwan not being included in the UN agency’s investigative task force, Hsieh said.
Taiwan has banned food imports from five Japanese prefectures — Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba — since the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011.
Since the disaster, it has also subjected nine categories of Japanese food products from other parts of Japan to batch-by-batch border inspections for radioactive residue.
About 175,000 items have since been tested, government data showed.
Asked by a lawmaker whether Taiwan has enough capacity to increase tests for radioactive residue if it resumes food product imports from the five prefectures, Hsieh said that the nation’s testing capacity outstrips annual demand by about three times.
Preparations for resuming imports have been made over the past few years, he said.
The government is considering lifting the ban following its application to join the Japan-led Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the world’s biggest trade blocs.
The bloc represents a market of 500 million people and accounts for 13.5 percent of global trade.
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