Why the worry over Japan’s Fukushima nuclear waste discharge plan? France has done it ‘for decades’
- Activists and neighbouring nations oppose the move, and question if the Japanese government has done enough to convince people of its safety
- But experts say tritium in the planned discharge is effectively harmless to humans, and levels are lower than annual releases by UK, China and France
The Japanese government insists its Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) has eliminated virtually all the radionuclides from the heavily diluted water that will be released into the Pacific Ocean from a 1km-long pipe that has been constructed at the site, with a number of global nuclear energy experts concurring that release of the treated water is the best available option.
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Three of the reactors went into meltdown after a magnitude-9 earthquake struck off the coast in March 2011 and triggered tsunamis that breached sea walls and cut the power needed to keep the units cool.
Opponents say they have little faith in the promises of the government or Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the operator of the Fukushima plant. The company has not permitted independent testing of samples from the site and has been roundly condemned for failing to implement safeguards to protect the six nuclear reactors at the plant.
“Even if it [the water] is treated and diluted, it will still contain radionuclides such as carbon-14 and tritium,” said Hajime Matsukubo, secretary general of the Tokyo-based Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre.
“We are seeing strong resistance from other countries and people who live in the area and whose livelihoods depend on the ocean, such as local fishermen, and we do not believe the Japanese government has done enough to speak to these groups,” he told This Week in Asia.
“This radioactive water is concentrated and contained in one place, but if that water is released it will travel around the world and we will never be able to collect it again.”
Environmental group Greenpeace has also expressed strong opposition, saying that discharging 1.3 million tonnes of water ignores human rights and breaches international maritime law.
Kazue Suzuki, a Tokyo-based campaigner with Greenpeace, said “[the government] has discounted the radiation risks and turned its back on the clear evidence that sufficient storage capacity is available on the nuclear site as well as in surrounding districts”.
“Rather than using the best available technology to minimise radiation hazards by storing and processing the water over the long term, they have opted for the cheapest option: dumping the water into the Pacific Ocean.”
China has been among the most vocal opponents of the plan, with Sun Xiaobo, director general of the Foreign Ministry’s Arms Control Department, saying at a press conference on Thursday that Tokyo “has not seriously responded to international concerns”.
China and other nations are not “fully convinced of the safety of the planned discharge”, he said. “Countries and the media need to tell Japan now to face its responsibilities, not to take any irresponsible action in a hasty way.”
Taiwan and the Federated States of Micronesia have also both expressed deep concerns about the planned release.
‘The best option’
Nuclear experts insist, however, that tritium is effectively harmless to humans and that releasing the treated water into the Pacific is the most effective solution.
“The water has had almost all of the radioactivity removed by the ALPS treatment but radioactive tritium, in the form of tritiated water, is almost impossible to separate from normal water at the quantities needed,” said Jim Smith, a professor of environmental science at the University of Portsmouth in Britain.
“Trying to remove the tritiated water would be extremely expensive and would lead to significant environmental pollution by carbon dioxide emissions from the energy needed for the removal process,” he said. “So I think slow and careful release of this treated water to the ocean is the best option.”
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Smith pointed out that the proposed release levels for tritium are around 45 times lower than annual releases from the UK’s Sellafield nuclear plant and some 450 times lower than from the French facility at Cap de la Hague. Similarly, nuclear plants in China and South Korea release far larger amounts of tritium each year.
“The standards set for the waste water, as long as they are adhered to, are sufficient to ensure that both the environment and human health are protected,” he said.
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Dr Vincent Gorgues, senior adviser at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission’s dismantling and decommissioning division, said Tepco was running out of options at the Fukushima plant.
Space for additional storage tanks for the water was running out, he said, and evaporating the water into the air would take a long time and still result in tritium releases.
“France has been releasing tritium for decades into the sea while monitoring precisely the impact on environment and human health on the population nearby – and finding none. The concentration of tritium Japan will release will be even lower than France.”
