(NEW YORK) — For four days in a row, the planet reached its hottest day ever recorded as regions all over the world endure dangerous heat.
Earth warmed to the highest temperature ever recorded by human-made instruments when the average global temperature reached 17.18 degrees Celsius, or 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit, on Tuesday, as millions of Americans celebrated the Fourth of July, data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction shows.
On Wednesday, the record was tied as global temperatures again reached 17.18 degrees Celsius. That record was broken on Thursday as global temperatures climbed to 17.23 degrees Celsius, or 63.01 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the NCEP.
The record was first set on Monday, when average global temperatures measured at 16.2 degrees Celsius, or 61.16 degrees Fahrenheit, but it only took one day to surpass that temperature.
The heat blanketing much of Earth has been driven by El Niño in combination with the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming, researchers say.
Those conditions may prompt even hotter temperatures over the next six weeks, according to Robert Rohde, a physicist and lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit environmental data analysis group.
Although the data only exists after 1979, this week’s temperatures likely represent the record for long before global temperatures began to be recorded, Rhode said in a Twitter post on Wednesday.
“Global warming is leading us into an unfamiliar world,” Rhode tweeted.
The record was broken at the same time that some regions in the southern United States are facing a weeks-long heat wave with dangerous temperatures, as well as intense heat domes occurring elsewhere in the world in places like China and North Africa.
Earth had the warmest June on record for air temperature and for sea surface temperature, but July and August could prove to be even hotter as El Niño continues to strengthen, Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist based in Anchorage, Alaska, wrote on Twitter.
June global temperature has been climbing since 1980, Brettschneider said.
Heat is the number-one weather-related killer in the world, with more than 600 people dying from heat-related illnesses every year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At least 13 people have died from heat-related illness in Texas so far this summer.
ABC News’ Max Golembo, Tracy Wholf, Samantha Wnek and Ginger Zee contributed to this report.
(KYIV, Ukraine) — Russia could stage an explosion at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to halt Ukrainian advances on the battlefield, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in a wide-ranging new interview with ABC News that was previewed on “World News with David Muir” on Thursday.
Speaking to ABC News’ Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz, Zelenskyy addressed fears that the power plant, which is the largest on the continent, could be sabotaged — with Ukrainian officials sounding the alarm that Russia has allegedly mined the facility in preparation for a false-flag operation to sabotage the plant and blame Ukraine.
The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency has said they have not seen evidence to back up Ukraine’s claims but they have also demanded more transparent access to the facility, which Russia took control of early in the invasion, as a matter of urgency.
“Are you concerned that the Russians might use explosives in the nuclear plant?” Raddatz asked.
“Are other explosives on the site? Yes,” Zelenskyy said. “Can they see explosives currently? No. Are there enough people who are … unbiased to make any conclusions with regard to how much of the site is contaminated with mines? No.”
He also said that there is a possibility Russia will blow up the plant in order to prevent Ukrainian advances from an ongoing counteroffensive, launched last month, that is aimed at retaking as much territory as possible in the eastern part of the country.
More from Raddatz’ interview with Zelenskyy in Ukraine will air on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday.
Ukrainian officials previously blamed Russia for sabotaging the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power plant in June, which led to widespread environmental damage and loss of life in both Ukrainian- and Russian-controlled areas.
Experts described the fallout as a “huge catastrophe for the ecosystem.”
Russia has denied responsibility and instead blamed Ukraine.
The American Nuclear Society issued a statement on Thursday saying that they were monitoring the situation at Zaporizhzhia but did not foresee bombardment or sabotage resulting in “radiation-related health consequences to the public.”
“In the unlikely event that containment structures were breached, any potential release of radiological material would be restricted to the immediate area surrounding the reactors,” the statement said.
“In this regard, any comparison between ZNPP and ‘Chernobyl’ or ‘Fukushima’ is both inaccurate and misleading,” the group continued, referring to two infamous nuclear accidents.
Ukraine’s intelligence chief on Thursday told Reuters there was a “decreasing” threat of such an attack but that could change.
“We are analyzing everything that is going on,” Zelenskyy told Raddatz. “Can we, based on this information, think that Russia is planning to explode the mines there in order to stop Ukrainian action in the battlefield? Well, yes, because if they lose even more initiative that they have, they will make some additional steps in order to make the entire world afraid of the global nuclear disaster and in order to stop all military action in the battlefield.”
(NEW YORK) — For three days in a row, the planet reached its hottest day ever recorded as regions all over the world endure dangerous heat.
Earth warmed to the highest temperature ever recorded by human-made instruments when the average global temperature reached 17.18 degrees Celsius, or 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit, on Tuesday, as millions of Americans celebrated the Fourth of July, data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction shows.
On Wednesday, the record was tied as global temperatures again reached 17.18 degrees Celsius, according to the NCEP.
The record was first set on Monday, when average global temperatures measured at 16.2 degrees Celsius, or 61.16 degrees Fahrenheit, but it only took one day to surpass that temperature.
The heat blanketing much of Earth has been driven by El Niño in combination with the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming, researchers say.
Those conditions may prompt even hotter temperatures over the next six weeks, Robert Rohde, a physicist and lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit environmental data analysis group, tweeted on Wednesday.
Although the data only exists after 1979, Tuesday’s temperatures likely represent the record for long before global temperatures began to be recorded, Rhode said.
“Global warming is leading us into an unfamiliar world,” Rhode tweeted.
The record was broken at the same time that some regions in the southern U.S are facing a weeks-long heat wave with dangerous temperatures, as well as intense heat domes occurring elsewhere in the world in places like China and North Africa.
Earth had the warmest June on record for air temperature and for sea surface temperature, but July and August could prove to be even hotter as El Niño continues to strengthen, Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist based in Anchorage, Alaska, wrote on Twitter.
June global temperature has been climbing since 1980, Brettschneider said.
Heat is the number-one weather-related killer in the world, with more than 600 people dying from heat-related illnesses every year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At least 13 people have died from heat-related illness in Texas so far this summer.
ABC News’ Max Golembo, Tracy Wholf, Samantha Wnek and Ginger Zee contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — A Princeton University graduate student is being held captive by an Iran-linked Shiite militia in Iraq where she was conducting field research for her Ph.D. in political science, according to officials and colleagues.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office announced in a statement on Wednesday that Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli-Russian dual citizen, “has been missing in Iraq for several months and is being held by the Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah.”
Kataib Hezbollah is designated by the United States as a terrorist organization, accused of targeting American forces in Iraq. It is one of the most hard-line and powerful militias in Iraq, with close ties to Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Kataib Hezbollah is separate from the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“Elizabeth Tsurkov is still alive and we hold Iraq responsible for her safety and well-being,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said. “She is an academic who visited Iraq on her Russian passport, at her own initiative pursuant to work on her doctorate and academic research on behalf of Princeton University in the U.S.”
There was no immediate comment from Iraqi officials.
Tsurkov would not have been allowed to enter Iraq on her Israeli passport, since the two countries do not have diplomatic relations and Iraq considers Israel a hostile state.
Princeton University, located in Princeton, New Jersey, released a brief statement on Wednesday saying Tsurkov is “a valued member” of the school’s community.
“We are deeply concerned for her safety and well-being, and we are eager for her to be able to rejoin her family and resume her studies,” the university added, without providing more details.
The New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a think tank in Washington, D.C. where Tsurkov is a non-resident fellow, published an article via its New Lines Magazine on Wednesday saying Tsurkov had informed her colleagues on March 19 that she was done with fieldwork and wanted to return to Princeton University to write her doctoral dissertation.
“We were relieved. We did not want her to stay in an Iraq that was increasingly dominated by pro-Iranian militias,” the New Lines Magazine wrote. “Just over a week later we learned from our sources that a pro-Iranian militia had kidnapped her in Baghdad, where she had been doing research. We have not heard from her since.”
Tsurkov’s family had requested that her abduction not be publicized in hopes of negotiating a quick release, according to the magazine.
“What followed Liz’s kidnapping were months of public silence but nonstop efforts to learn more about her situation,” the magazine added.
The magazine noted that Tsurkov’s fieldwork “poses no threat to anyone,” however, as an Israeli national, “there are parts of the Middle East where her very identity places her at grave risk.”
“But Liz is committed to a specific style of granular, hyperlocal research that requires fieldwork, and she never seems frightened of anything,” the magazine wrote. “She stayed in Iraq.”
Tsurkov is also “an outspoken critic of all three of the major likely players involved in negotiating her release: Israel, Iran and Russia,” which complicates matters, according to the magazine.
“All of us feel that the United States needs to be involved in some way in helping Liz,” the magazine wrote. “She is not a U.S. national, and her disappearance did not trigger the sort of aggressive U.S. reaction that an American’s might. But Liz is very much a part of America. She works with a Washington think tank, writes for an American magazine and studies at Princeton University. She deserves America’s every effort to bring her to safety.”
ABC News has reached out to the U.S. Department of State for comment.
ABC News’ Laryssa Demkiw and Conor Finnegan contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Ukrainian officials have heightened warnings in recent days that Russia plans to blow up the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — the largest nuclear plant in Europe.
The plant has been at the center of concern since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Russian troops stormed the plant and took control on March 4, 2022, at one point kidnapping two top Ukrainian energy company officials.
The plant is located on the banks of the Dnipro River in the country’s southeast. It continues to be run by Ukrainian staff and has suffered many outages and even shelling since the war began.
Warnings have became more dire after Russia allegedly blew up the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power plant on June 6, with officials claiming the same could be done at Zaporizhzhia. The nuclear plant also relies on water from the reservoir to provide power for its turbine condensers, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Ukraine claims Russia has placed explosives at Zaporizhzhia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Telegram Tuesday that Ukrainian intelligence has information that Russian troops “have placed objects resembling explosives on the roof of several power units of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has insisted it is the Ukrainians who are planning an attack at the plant.
Satellite imagery of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant from June 30 obtained by ABC News does not appear to show any objects on the roof of the plant.
In a statement on Wednesday, the IAEA said that while it has inspected sections of the power plant multiple times in recent weeks, it needs greater access to properly confirm the absence of mines or explosives at the site.
IAEA experts on site have conducted inspections, including regular walk downs across the site, but have not observed any visible indications of mines or explosives, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said.
Last month, Ukrainian officials warned that Russia plans to stage a “terrorist attack” at the plant. Ukraine’s chief of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, claimed Russia had now completed preparation to potentially sabotage the plant if it chooses. He claimed the plant’s cooling pods have been rigged with explosives. If destroyed, that could lead to the reactor melting down.
“Whether the Kremlin decides to go ahead with this scenario today depends solely on the reaction of the global world,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said in a statement in late June. “The red lines have to be defined. The consequences must be announced. Not tomorrow. Today.”
Disaster drills
Ukraine has been holding disaster drills in Zaporizhzhia, preparing residents in the surrounding area and showing them how to deal with a potential radioactive disaster.
ABC News was invited to the drills last week, about 30 miles from the plant, where firefighters in hazmat gear simulated decontaminating people from radiation during an evacuation.
Last year, Russian shelling even caused damage to the nuclear plant and cut power to the surrounding areas. The shelling came amid Russian attacks on Ukrainian power supplies.
The IAEA held talks with Russian and Ukrainian officials in November and December, with the goal of establishing a safe zone around the plant where there would be no fighting.
In October, Grossi said the perimeter of the power plant was mined, warning that a nuclear accident is a very clear possibility.
(KYIV, Ukraine) — Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive has allowed their forces to take the “initiative” in the war against Russian invaders but “we want to do it faster,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz in a wide-ranging new interview previewed on Good Morning America Thursday.
“What is your assessment of how the counteroffensive is going right now?” Raddatz, ABC News’ chief global affairs correspondent, asked Zelenskyy in the sit-down from his nation’s capital.
He said that he supported his military’s assessment that the operation, which began in earnest last month, was “going to plan.”
“We would all like to see the counteroffensive accomplished in a shorter period of time, but there’s reality,” he said. “We are advancing. We are not stuck in one place.”
While Ukraine has succeeded in liberating a number of villages in recent weeks, progress has not matched the lightning speeds of last fall’s campaign — which saw Ukraine reclaim thousands of square miles of territory in one week in the Kharkiv region, Ukrainian officials said at the time.
“Today, the initiative is on our side,” Zelenskyy told Raddatz. “We are advancing, albeit not as fast [as we would like]. But we are advancing.”
Raddatz also asked about whether Ukraine can succeed without F-16s, the fighter aircraft Ukraine has asked for but not yet been provided and if the U.S. and others had been too slow to provide critical military equipment.
“F-16 or any other equipment that we do need will give us an opportunity to move faster, to save more lives, to stand our ground for a longer time,” Zelenskyy said. “Well, some weapons have been provided, on the other hand, helps us save lives and we appreciate that. Of course, foot dragging will lead to more lives lost.”
Despite the grinding progress and heavy losses, Ukraine’s military leaders remain confident that the operation, seen as key to securing a satisfactory peace, has been proceeding as expected, Zelenskyy said.
The U.S. has been a key ally as Ukraine has prepared to push back into occupied territory. Last week, U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that the new offensive is “going to be very difficult, it’s going to be very long and it’s going to be very, very bloody.”
Zelenskyy told Raddatz in Kyiv that it was “too early” to report major successes on the battlefield.
Analysts suggest that Ukraine is keeping a large proportion of its assembled forces in reserve — with the hope of launching a major attack once a weak point has been identified along the front lines, which stretch for thousands of miles through eastern Ukraine.
Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, expressed confidence when he was asked by Raddatz earlier this week if he was confident of retaking the key city of Bakhmut.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I’m sure.”
More from Raddatz’ interview with Zelenskyy in Ukraine will air on ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir on Thursday and on This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. military released dramatic video of a tense encounter on Wednesday over the skies of eastern Syria as Russian fighter jets were seen “harassing” three American military drones carrying out a mission against the Islamic State group, an official said.
In a statement, the U.S. Air Force general in the Middle East labeled the run-in “unsafe and unprofessional behavior” and called on Russia to stop what he called “reckless behavior” that has been carried out by pilots flying over eastern Syria where the U.S. still has 900 troops assisting in anti-terrorism efforts.
The conduct “threaten[s] the safety of both U.S. and Russian forces,” he said.
Wednesday’s incident is the latest in a string of dozens of what officials describe as provocative Russian flights over eastern Syria, which prompted the U.S. to send F-22 Raptors to deter flights above American military bases there.
Multiple cameras and sensors aboard the three MQ-9 Reaper drones captured in vivid detail how the Russian Su-35 jets on Wednesday dropped parachuted flares in the drones’ path and one of the jets used its afterburners in front of one of the drones.
The quick declassification of the video capturing the encounter recalled a similar video release in March to show a Russian pilot’s similar harassment of an MQ-9 flying in international airspace above the Black Sea, resulting in a collision, officials said then.
Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, the commander of the Ninth Air Force and the combined forces air component commander for U.S. Central Command, said in a statement that Russia initiated the altercation.
“Against established norms and protocols, the Russian jets dropped multiple parachute flares in front of the drones, forcing our aircraft to conduct evasive maneuvers,” Grynkewich said.
“Additionally, one Russian pilot positioned their aircraft in front of an MQ-9 and engaged afterburner, thereby reducing the operator’s ability to safely operate the aircraft,” he said.
“We urge Russian forces in Syria to cease this reckless behavior and adhere to the standards of behavior expected of a professional air force so we can resume our focus on the enduring defeat of ISIS,” he added.
In mid-June, CENTCOM announced that it was deploying F-22 Raptors to the Middle East to deter Russian flights above American bases in eastern Syria.
“Russian Forces’ unsafe and unprofessional behavior is not what we expect from a professional air force. Their regular violation of agreed upon airspace deconfliction measures increases the risk of escalation or miscalculation,” Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, head of CENTCOM, said then. “Alongside our partners and allies, we are committed to improving the security and stability in the region.”
Defense officials have said that there have been dozens of incidents in recent months where Russian jets have overflown American bases without using a safety line that has been in use for years to prevent miscalculations.
(JENIN, West Bank) — Israel withdrew its forces from the Jenin refugee camp just after midnight Wednesday, ending the largest military operation it’s conducted in the occupied West Bank in nearly twenty years.
The Israeli operation — which included drone airstrikes, hundreds of special forces and tanks — lasted 48 hours, leaving fatalities and scenes of earthquake-like destruction. The Palestinian Health Ministry says 12 Palestinians were killed, and 141 injured, 20 in critical condition. The Israeli Defense Forces reported one soldier was killed.
Israeli officials have defended the deadly incursion as a counterterrorism operation. Col. Richard Hecht, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, told ABC News the aim was, “to dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the area and break the mentality of the camp as a ‘safe haven’ for terrorist operatives.”
The Jenin refugee camp is a stronghold for Palestinian militant groups, from the established Palestinian Islamic Jihad to new splinter groups like The Lions Den, Israeli and U.S. officials say. Over the last year, dozens of militants who’ve carried out deadly shootings, stabbings or car ramming attacks against Israeli civilians have hailed or taken shelter in the densely populated camp, according to Israeli and Palestinian security officials.
In a speech at the U.S. Embassy’s July 4th celebration in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called militants in the Jenin refugee camp, “the most legitimate target on the planet: people who want to annihilate our country.”
Netanyahu thanked the U.S. for supporting the operation. The Biden administration said it supported Israel’s right to defend itself.
Despite repeated pleas from Jerusalem and Washington, the Palestinian Authority has been unable, or unwilling, to send its own security forces into Jenin to root out militant activity. The camp is under President Mahmoud Abbas’s jurisdiction, but the deeply unpopular leader has lost much of his ability to govern, including on the security front, his critics say.
Abbas’s spokesperson Abu Rudneih denounced the Israeli operation as a “new war crime,” with the president promptly cutting off security ties with Israel, a step that will likely be temporary. In a sign of his embattled leadership, mourners heckled Abbas on Wednesday when he showed up at the funerals for the Palestinian victims. “You have no place here in the camp,” some shouted, “shame on you!”
Meanwhile, Israeli officials are hailing the operation a success. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement, “we have intercepted weapon production lines and confiscated thousands of explosive devices. We have demolished dozens of weapon manufacturing sites, hideouts and labs for the production of explosive devices.”
The IDF says it detained over 100 suspected Palestinian militants, arresting over 30. Of the 12 Palestinians killed, Hecht tells ABC News, “no non-combatants were killed during the counterterrorism activity in the Jenin camp. The IDF is not fighting against the Palestinian people – only against terrorist operatives.”
Activists inside the camp claim several of the 12 Palestinians killed were civilians.
Visiting an IDF command center near Jenin Tuesday, Netanyahu praised the Jenin operation and indicated it was the start of a new counterterrorism strategy.
“I can say that our extensive operation in Jenin is not a one-off,” Netanyahu said, adding “we will eradicate terrorism wherever we see it.”
The Israeli leader indicated the IDF may replace its nightly arrest raids in Jenin with less frequent, but longer sweeps of the area lasting a few days at a time.
But even as Israeli leaders praised the operation for striking a “severe blow” to Jenin militants, new Palestinian attacks undercut those claims and raised the specter that the deadly Israeli raid may only intensify the violence.
On Tuesday, the second day of the Jenin operation, a Palestinian attacker drove his car into pedestrians waiting at a bus stop in Tel Aviv, Israeli police said. After the impact, the attacker crawled out of his car window, wielding a knife, and stabbed two civilians before being shot dead by an armed civilian. Eight Israelis were wounded, three in serious condition, according to Israeli police.
The assailant was a Palestinian from a village near Hebron with no criminal record, according to Israeli authorities.
The Islamic militant group Hamas swiftly praised the attack, calling it the “first response to the Jenin Operation.”
Early Wednesday, after the Israeli Army withdrew from the Jenin refugee camp, militants in Gaza fired a volley of 5 rockets on the Israeli city of Sderot, according to the IDF. All were shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome system and no one was reported injured, the IDF said.
Israel’s defense forces responded with airstrikes on what it called a Hamas rocket manufacturing site.
The residents of the camp, home to 18,000 Palestinians, expressed anger and shock at the level of destruction wrought by the IDF. Thousands who fled the violence returned home Wednesday to a neighborhood turned upside down.
Abed Al Salam Al Hayga, a social activist in the camp, told ABC News, “the level of destruction of the infrastructure is beyond imagination, the Israeli Army destroyed the streets of the camp with bulldozers and digging the water pipes network and electricity. The camp is now without electricity and water and no cars can be used in the camp.”
Clips posted on social media show streets in rubble, damaged apartments, blown out storefronts and crushed cars.
The NGO Doctors Without Borders says the destruction has hampered their efforts to deliver medical care to the dozens wounded.
The IDF did not immediately address this claim, but it said in a previous statement that all the injured were able to receive assistance.
(NEW YORK) — The planet reached the highest temperature ever recorded by human-made instruments during one of America’s most quintessential summer holidays.
The average global temperature reached 17.18 degrees Celsius, or 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit, on Tuesday, as temperatures sizzled beyond the triple-digit mark around the world and millions of Americans celebrated the Fourth of July, data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction shows.
It only took one day to break the record set on Monday, when average global temperatures measured at 16.2 degrees Celsius, or 61.16 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the NCEP.
The heat blanketing much of Earth has been driven by El Niño in combination with the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming, researchers say.
Those conditions may prompt even hotter temperatures over the next six weeks, Robert Rohde, a physicist and lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit environmental data analysis group, tweeted on Wednesday.
Although the data only exists after 1979, Tuesday’s temperatures likely represent the record for long before global temperatures began to be recorded, Rhode said.
“Global warming is leading us into an unfamiliar world,” Rhode tweeted.
The record was broken at the same time that some regions in the southern U.S are facing a weeks-long heat wave with dangerous temperatures, as well as intense heat domes occurring elsewhere in the world in places like China and North Africa.
Earth had the warmest June on record for air temperature and for sea surface temperature, but July and August could prove to be even hotter as El Niño continues to strengthen, Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist based in Anchorage, Alaska, wrote on Twitter.
June global temperature has been climbing since 1980, Brettschneider said.
Heat is the number-one weather-related killer in the world, with more than 600 people dying from heat-related illnesses every year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At least 13 people have died from heat-related illness in Texas so far this summer.
ABC News’ Max Golembo, Tracy Wholf, Samantha Wnek and Ginger Zee contributed to this report.
(TOKYO) — The United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), approved plans by Japan to release water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday.
The plan would see Japan release 1.3 million tons of treated wastewater — the equivalent of 500 Olympic swimming pools — which has been filtered through the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) from the destroyed Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean following the catastrophic earthquake that rocked Japan.
The water, which was used to cool nuclear reactors following the deadly Tohoku earthquake and ensuing tsunami that hit Fukushima on March 11, 2011, is currently being stored in about 1,000 tanks on the site and the majority of the water is currently being used to cool molten fuel, with the remainder coming from rainwater and groundwater that entered the reactor units.
It is set to be released by Japan in a controlled and gradual manner over the next 30 to 40 years.
“Based on its comprehensive assessment, the IAEA has concluded that the approach and activities to the discharge of ALPS treated water taken by Japan are consistent with relevant international safety standards,” announced IAEA Chief Rafael Grossi.
Presenting findings of the IAEA’s two-year safety review, the United Nations body concluded that the release of the water would have “negligible radiological impact to people and the environment.”
Grossi, currently on a three-day visit to Japan, is meeting with senior Japanese officials, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and will be presenting “comprehensive findings” of the IAEA’s final report ahead of the last preparations for the release.
Grossi is also due to visit the Fukushima Daiichi plant to inaugurate an IAEA office at the site as the IAEA has pledged to be committed to engaging with Japan before, during and after the discharges occur.
“That the plan, as it has been proposed and devised, is in conformity with the agreed international standards,” said Grossi speaking to the press following the meeting with Kishida.“If the government decides to proceed with it, the IAEA will be permanently here, reviewing, monitoring, assessing this activity for decades to come.”
Japan’s water release plan has been opposed by China, South Korea and some Pacific Island nations with Mao Ning, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, calling on Japan to take seriously “international and domestic concerns and stop forcibly proceeding with its ocean discharge plan.”
Speaking at a Ministry of Foreign Affairs meeting on July 4, Mao Ning cited a Global Times survey which found that 80% of over 11,000 respondents across 11 countries expressed worry, fear and anger over the plan.
Japanese fishing communities have also vocally objected Japan’s plans, fearing the release of the water would harm the reputation of their produce.
“We cannot support the government’s stance that an ocean release is the only solution,” said Masanobu Sakamoto, president of JF Zengyoren, Japan Fisheries Cooperatives, in June.
Anti-nuclear activists have also taken to the streets, rallying outside Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings in May as they called on Japan to scrap its plans, chanting “don’t nuke the pacific” as they protested.
Kishida has vowed that as a responsible leader in the international community, he won’t allow emissions that have a negative impact on people’s health and the environment in Japan and around the world.
The ALPS process is unable to fully eradicate Tritium — a “naturally occurring radioactive form of hydrogen.” Yet some experts say there is no worry and that Tritium only poses a risk to humans if consumed in large quantities.
“Almost everything is radioactive, including the Pacific Ocean, where tritium accounts for a modest 0.04% of total radioactivity,” Nigel Marks, professor of Physics & Astronomy at Curtin University, said speaking on the release of Fukushima water. “The minuscule amount of extra radiation won’t make the tiniest jot of difference.”
Meanwhile, Japanese regulators have completed their final safety inspection and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is expected to receive a permit to discharge the water in a week.
Officials remain mum on the date they plan to begin releasing the water but have pledged to start the decades-long process this summer.
