World News for Students of English

21-10-2020 07:00

Japanese media said that, starting in 2022, the government was planning to slowly dump more than 1 million tons of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the sea.

The question of what to do with the wastewater has been a contentious point for some time, and now, the Japanese government is running out of space and time. Some of the water was used to cool the nuclear plant after a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The rest is a collection of contaminated rainwater and groundwater, and it has been collected in tanks. However, it takes up space, and it is a threat for workers because of the radiation levels.

Although the water has been filtered, some radioactive isotopes were too difficult to remove. Fishermen in the area fear that the government’s decision could turn consumers away from their products.

Difficult words: contentious (causing disagreement and argument), contaminated (poisoned of polluted), isotope (an atom that has a different weight from other forms of the same atom).

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