Tokyo, Apr 23 (EFE).- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Tuesday began its second inspection of the discharge of treated radioactive wastewater from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The IAEA delegation, headed by Gustavo Caruso, director of safety and security coordination at the organization's Department of Nuclear Safety and Security, held meetings with officials from the Japanese government and the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco).

On Wednesday, the team will travel to Fukushima Daiichi to analyze the process of treating the contaminated wastewater accumulated in the plant before discharging it into the Pacific Ocean nearby.

At the beginning of his meeting with senior officials from the Japanese foreign ministry on Tuesday, Caruso said their combined "independent, objective and science-based approach will help build confidence to the people in Japan and beyond."

Since last August, Tepco has been dumping batches of the more than 1.32 million tons of contaminated water into the Pacific following processing to remove most radioactive materials and dilution, a process that will last several decades.

The government, the plant operator and the Japanese nuclear regulator opted for dumping into the ocean as the best way to solve the problem of increasingly limited storage within the nuclear facilities, and after ruling out other alternatives due to their technical complexity or high cost.

The discharging has generated criticism from neighboring countries, especially China, despite the fact that the IAEA gave its approval to the Japanese plan after concluding that it complies with the safety standards of the sector, and that the "gradual discharges of the treated water to the sea (...) would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment."

Tepco has so far discharged four batches of the processed water, and in all cases the IAEA has confirmed that the concentrations of tritium, the main radioactive element remaining at the time of discharge, remain within levels declared safe by the Japanese authorities.

In addition to the reviews carried out by a permanent IAEA office at the Fukushima plant, the fifth batch to be discharged this week will also be the subject of analysis both by the international organization and by laboratories in various countries, China among them.

The IAEA has been supervising the entire process of dismantling the Fukushima plant as well as the preparations for the spill, and in February it sent its first mission to Japan since the discharge of water into the Pacific began. EFE

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