Japan’s plan to release radioactive waste water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean got the go-ahead from the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Tuesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) approved the arrangement as the Fukushima plant runs out of space to store the water, saying the release would have a “negligible” environmental impact. The proposal has been opposed by South Korea and China, and Japan will still need approval from a regulator to discharge the water once used to cool nuclear reactors. A tsunami in 2011 catastrophically flooded the Fukushima plant, creating the worst nuclear disaster the world has seen since Chernobyl. Tokyo argues that the water to be released in the ocean will contain levels of radioactive forms of carbon and hydrogen within safety standards.
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