Twelve years after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan began releasing some of the contaminated water from the plant into the Pacific Ocean, writes BBC.

Despite widespread opposition, the government and plant operators Tepco went ahead with the plan - carefully vetted by the UN atomic regulator.

Japan used water to cool the plant"s reactors when it went into meltdown in 2011 - and this highly radioactive water was then treated and collected in tanks every day. But the site was running out of storage space. It was treated to remove all radioactive elements, except tritium which is very difficult to remove. The water was diluted to reduce radioactivity to 1,500 becquerels per litre, far below the drinking water standard of 10,000 Bq/L.

There were citizen protests in Japan and South Korea, but China’s government came out swinging - labelling Japan as “selfish” and “irresponsible”. It also imposed a ban on all seafood from Japan.

Thursday’s release was the first of four scheduled between now and the end of March 2024. The entire process will take at least 30 years.