Photo/Illutration Storage tanks are seen at TEPCO’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in April 2021. (Reina Kitamura)

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the tanks that store treated but still contaminated water at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will reach full capacity later than expected.

It projected on April 27 they will be full in either the summer or fall of 2023, not its previous estimate of spring 2023.

The tanks store water treated through a filtration system, called ALPS (advanced liquid processing system), which is a multi-nuclide removal system that removes various radioactive materials from contaminated water.

TEPCO said on April 27 that the amount of contaminated water at the plant only increased by an average of 130 tons a day.

The amount of contaminated water was lower than what the company had expected because of its measures to prevent underground water or rainwater from coming into the buildings in which nuclear power reactors and other facilities are located, it said.

The estimate for when the storage tanks will be completely full has been modified several times before.

The government and TEPCO initially said the tanks could be full by sometime around summer 2022. That estimate was later amended to “by around the fall of 2022.”

When the company announced plans to add 23 storage tanks with a total capacity of about 30,000 tons at the plant in May 2021, it said the tanks would be full by around spring 2023.

TEPCO plans to dilute the tritium concentration in the ALPS treated water using seawater as the radioactive hydrogen atom cannot be removed through the filtration system. It then aims to discharge it into the sea in spring 2023.

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