Third IAEA-led Expert Visit to Collect Marine Samples Offshore Fukushima

14 May 2015

Featured, Press Releases

International experts will visit Japan from 18 to 25 May 2015 to collect water and sediment samples from the sea near TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station to support the quality assurance of radioactivity data collection and analysis by the responsible authorities in Japan.
The mission follows two previous visits by IAEA experts in September and November 2014, where seawater samples from around the power station were collected for inter-laboratory comparisons of radioactivity analyses.
The team will include two IAEA staff and two experts from the network of Analytical Laboratories for the Measurement of Environmental Radioactivity (ALMERA) from Ireland and New Zealand, in an effort to further increase transparency and build confidence in marine monitoring results. In addition to seawater, the team will also collect sediment samples during this visit to broaden the scope of the data reliability and comparability assessment.
The visit is the third follow-up activity to recommendations made on marine monitoring in a report by the IAEA International Peer Review Mission on Mid- and Long-Term Roadmap towards the Decommissioning of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Units 1-4, which reviewed Japan’s efforts to plan and implement the decommissioning of the plant.
Previous sampling missions have shown that Japan’s seawater collection procedures follow the appropriate methodological standards required to obtain representative samples, and that the results reported by the laboratories involved in marine monitoring are reliable.
The IAEA runs similar exercises for analytical laboratories worldwide to help improve capabilities in sampling and analysis of radioactivity data.
Press Contacts
IAEA Press Office
[43] 1 2600 21273
press@iaea.org