North Korea urges Japan to 'immediately halt' nuclear water release

Slamming Japan for "deceiving and mocking" the international community, North Korea Thursday called on Tokyo to "immediately stop" releasing treated radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman said: "It is undeniable that the discharge into the sea of polluted water containing large quantities of radioactive materials is an unethical act of destroying the geo-ecological environment and of threatening the existence of mankind," Pyongyang-based KCNA reported.

Japan on Tuesday decided to discharge nuclear-polluted water from the Fukushima power plant into the sea amid opposition from the international community.

"Japan is deceiving and mocking the international community by claiming that the nuclear-polluted water has been filtered by the poly-nuclide clearing equipment to 'clean water'," the spokesman said.

He added that it is "… scientifically verified that the 'clean water' still contains a large amount of extremely dangerous radioactive nuclides including cesium, strontium, and ruthenium as well as tritium."

Ignoring opposition from fishing communities and China, Japan on Thursday began releasing treated nuclear waste from the crippled Fukushima power plant into the sea.

In the first phase, the operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) will dilute around 7,800 tons of the treated water with seawater and the diluted water will be released over 17 consecutive days.

The TEPCO has already filled a facility, which is called a discharge vertical shaft, with the treated and diluted water.

Each ton of treated water is mixed with about 1,200 tons of seawater.

There are some 1.3 million tons of treated water at the TEPCO complex and the operator is running out of storage capacity which has forced Japan to release the water into the ocean.