Russia Calls Japan Not Informing Complete Information About Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

The radioactive wastewater tank at PLTN Fukushima, Japan. (Wikimedia Commons/IAEA Imagebank)

JAKARTA - Russia on Wednesday said Japan did not provide complete information about radioactive water dumped from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, despite repeated requests from Moscow and China.

Japan is known to have started releasing treated radioactive water from PLTN Fukushima to the Pacific Ocean in August, receiving strong criticism from China, which immediately banned all seafood imports from Japan.

"We and China have repeatedly urged the Japanese side to show transparency, granting all countries with full access to all information about the disposal of water from the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova, quoted by Reuters, October 5.

"Japan has not done this," Zakharova continued.

"Japan failed to respond well to these issues and guaranteed the absence of threats, including long-term threats," he said.

Japan said the release was safe. Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has concluded that the impact of the disposal on humans and the environment is "negligible".

Last month, Russian regulators said the country was considering joining China in banning imports of Japanese seafood.

Zakharova said most of Russia's concerns would "disappear immediately if Tokyo stopped its waste disposal process into the world's oceans", adding that Beijing also expressed the same view.

It is known that a large earthquake and tsunami in 2011 triggered the nuclear crisis in Fukushima, the world's worst nuclear disaster after PLTN Chornobyl 25 years earlier, in the region that was then the territory of the Soviet Union.