ALPS Water Treatment System Commissioned to Remove 62 Radionuclides

The Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), designed by Toshiba, began operations at Fukushima Daiichi. ALPS uses a multi-step ion exchange and precipitation process to remove 62 radionuclides from contaminated water — everything except tritium, which is chemically identical to hydrogen and cannot be separated economically by current technology. Initially plagued by maintenance issues and corrosion, ALPS capacity was expanded over subsequent years. By 2020, TEPCO had processed most stored water to secondary standards, but reprocessing revealed that some tanks still contained above-limit radionuclides other than tritium.