BEIJING (Kyodo) — China’s latest report on its atomic power industry omitted data on radioactive materials released from domestic nuclear plants, in what may be an effort to avoid figures that could undercut Beijing’s opposition to the Fukushima Daiichi wastewater discharge.
The move followed reports by overseas media last year that Chinese nuclear power plants in 2022 released wastewater containing tritium at levels up to nine times higher than the annual discharge limit set for the substance at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear complex.
In June, China lifted its blanket ban on Japanese seafood imports, imposed in August 2023 after the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima plant into the sea.
However, Beijing remains opposed to the ocean discharge, calling the treated water “nuclear-contaminated.”
The 2024 China Nuclear Energy Yearbook said only that radioactive materials released by the country’s nuclear power plants “did not exceed annual upper limits set by national regulatory authorities” and that there was “no negative impact on the environment and public health.”
According to previous yearbooks, the Qinshan nuclear plant in Zhejiang Province, eastern China, discharged around 202 trillion becquerels of tritium in 2022 — far exceeding the 22 trillion becquerel annual limit set for the treated water released from the Fukushima plant.
The Japanese government said the Fukushima nuclear plant had been releasing about 2.2 trillion becquerels of tritium annually before it suffered meltdowns following a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
China has maintained that wastewater from regular nuclear plant operations is “fundamentally different from” the radioactive water treated after coming into “direct contact with the melted core” of the Fukushima reactor during the accident.
At the Fukushima plant, large volumes of radioactive water have accumulated after being used to cool melted nuclear fuel. The water is treated to remove most radionuclides except tritium, which is diluted to less than one-40th of Japan’s national safety standard before being released into the sea.
