Tokyo Electric Power

Japan has decided it will start releasing radioactive water accumulated at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea after treatment, infuriating local residents and worrying neighbouring countries.

The decision comes a decade after the nation's worst-ever atomic disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

Three former executives at the operator of Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant went on trial June 30, the only people ever to face a criminal court in connection with the 2011 meltdowns that left swathes of countryside uninhabitable.

A powerful earthquake rocked northern Japan early on Nov. 22, briefly disrupting cooling functions at a nuclear plant and generating a small tsunami that hit the same Fukushima region devastated by a 2011 quake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, Reuters reported.