The IAEA is conducting a safety review of the plan from 2021. (file)
A government spokesman said on Friday that Japan would welcome the lifting of restrictions on food imports imposed by the European Union after a nuclear accident caused by a major earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
The Nikkei newspaper reported earlier on Friday that the European Union is in the final stages of lifting all restrictions on Japanese food. It did not identify its sources.
The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant north of Tokyo on Japan’s east coast has been under lockdown since an earthquake and tsunami caused much of the plant to melt down.
“We understand that some positive steps have been taken toward lifting the ban, which we welcome as the Japanese government,” spokesman Mr. Hirokazu Matsuno told a daily news conference in Tokyo.
He said he hoped the easing of restrictions would help rebuild areas devastated by the nuclear disaster.
The 2011 earthquake and tsunami killed approximately 20,000 people on the Pacific coast of Japan. Thousands of residents were forced to evacuate due to a fault in the nuclear plant.
The lifting of the sanctions report comes a week ahead of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Mariano Grossi’s trip to Japan to present his agency’s findings on the safety of Japan’s plan to release water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. ocean.
Japan plans to release 1.3 million metric tons of water exposed to radiation inside the destroyed power plant, after removing most of its radioactive elements.
The released water, which has been used primarily to cool the damaged reactors, will contain traces of tritium, an isotope that is difficult to remove from water.
The IAEA is conducting a safety review of the plan from 2021. It said it would inaugurate an office at the Fukushima plant during Mr Grossi’s visit.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV Staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)