US firm Kurion Inc, and GE Hitachi Canada, a joint project between the Japanese and US corporations, also won tenders for the job. Each of the three contractors will be given 1 billion yen (US$9.5 million) to present a working filter prototype by March 2016.
Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO has built thousands of water tanks to contain the toxic run-off from the plant and is already trialing a system that filters 62 radioactive materials. But the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) does not filter tritium, a mildly radioactive byproduct of nuclear generation, so the water cannot be safely discharged into the Pacific Ocean.
“We are offering a unique combined filtering technology, unlike our Western colleagues, which allows it to be more cost-efficient,” said project manager Sergey Florya in an interview with RIA Novosti news agency.
Contaminated water
He said that the level of tritium in Fukushima water is 10,000 times higher than the norm allowed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Currently there are 367,000 tons of contaminated water, stored in tanks inside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
