Japan Dumps Purified Water Back Into Ocean

Nearly 850-tons of water contaminated during a radioactive leak in Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Power plant were purified and discharged into the sea on Monday, NBC News reports.  

The water had been stored in 41 sub drain pits that surround four defunct nuclear reactors. They were destroyed when an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan in March 2011. The disaster killed around 16,000 people, forced some 300,000 to evacuate their homes and left a huge area of land unusable for decades.

It also prompted a debate about the safety of nuclear emergency in the resource-scarce country and the slow and painstaking clean-up process has been plagued with a spate of leaks that have allowed contaminated water to reach the ocean.

"Once this sub drain system is fully operational, the level of contaminated water is expected to be reduced to 150 tons per day," company spokesman Satoshi Togawa told NBC News.

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