The Tokyo Electric Power Company(TEPCO), the operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, announced that the discharge of wastewater from the facility will begin at 1 p.m. Thursday.

TEPCO said it has verified that tritium levels in water treated using the Advanced Liquid Processing System(ALPS) and diluted with seawater falls below the standard of one-thousand-500 becquerels per liter, and also confirmed that there are no weather concerns.

The operator added that tritium levels were also below the standard in water samples obtained by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.

Following the Japanese government's decision to start the release on Thursday, TEPCO sent about a ton of wastewater to the dilution facility, after which the water was mixed with one-thousand-200 tons of seawater in a tank due to the inability to remove tritium through the ALPS process.

TEPCO plans to treat, dilute and release around 460 tons of wastewater a day for the next 17 days for a total of seven-thousand-800 tons in the first phase.