Seoul, (Samajweekly) South Korea and Japan have agreed that a delegation from Seoul will visit Tokyo for four days to assess the latter’s plan to discharge radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, the Foreign Ministry here said on Saturday.
Working-level officials from the two countries held a meeting in Seoul on Friday to discuss details of South Korean experts’ planned visit to the nuclear plant, reports Yonhap News Agency.
The meeting lasted for 12 hours until around 2 a.m. Saturday.
The two sides agreed on the team’s four-day visit during the meeting and will hold an additional consultation in coming days, the Ministry said.
The director-general-level meeting came after President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reached an agreement on the visit during a summit held on April 7
On Friday, Park Ku-yeon, the first deputy chief of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, told a press briefing that the inspection team will comprise some 20 experts in safety regulation, check the operation of treatment and discharge facilities in Fukushima and secure information South Korea needs to conduct scientific evaluation of the contaminated water.
The inspection comes amid concerns over possible health and environmental hazards from the release of more than 1 million tonnes of water from the wrecked plant.
The Fukushima plant has stored more than 1.3 million tonnes of water through a custom purification system known as the Advanced Liquid Processing System since three reactors melted down after a powerful earthquake struck off the coast in March 2011.
