TOKYO: A group of angry demonstrators belonging to the “Sayonara Genpatsu – Farewell Nuclear) took to the streets of Tokyo today in a protest march that ended outside Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) headquarters, where they gathered shouting slogans against the Japanese government’s decision to release radioactive treated tritium water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific.

The water will initially be released in smaller portions and with extra checks, with the first discharge totalling 7,800 cubic metres over about 17 days starting Thursday, TEPCO said.

“The ocean is not a garbage can,” a woman protestor from Saitama prefecture told Arab News Japan. 

A student from Hiroshima said that the decision of Japan’s Prime Minister KISHIDA Fumio to agree on the water release despite all concerns “could eventually contaminate many people worldwide.”

Other protesters said TEPCO and the Japanese government “don’t own the ocean and thus have no right to dump contaminated water there.”

Fishermen participants who oppose the government’s decision said they plan to file legal action in different regions of Japan against the government and TEPCO.