A team of researchers at Kindai University and other collaborators has succeeded in removing the radioactive substance tritium from water, raising hopes of fully decontaminating the tainted water stored at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Tritiated water is said to be difficult to separate from ordinary water as the two substances have similar chemical properties.
Tatsuhiko Ihara, a professor in the Faculty of Engineering at Kindai's Hiroshima campus, and others used processed aluminum powder to develop a filter that has numerous superfine pores with diameters of 5 nanometers or less, the university announced Wednesday. One nanometer is equal to 1 billionth of a meter.