Japan urged to be transparent about Fukushima water release tests, amid charm offensive to defuse tensions

A lack of communication with its neighbours could mean Japan’s spot checks on water quality and data releases have come ‘too late’, analysts say

Greater transparency and more outreach are key, they say, especially among Pacific nations where China’s allies have stepped up opposition

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A facility that pumps up seawater to dilute treated waste water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:30am, 29 Aug 2023Updated: 10:08am, 29 Aug 2023

If Japan is to defuse tensions over the discharge of waste water from its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and put to rest accusations of environmental damage, then analysts say it must be completely transparent and share accurate data on radiation levels.

But even that may not be enough to satisfy the fiercest critics of its decision to gradually discharge the treated water into the Pacific Ocean over the next three decades.

“Japan has really dug itself into a deep hole on this entire issue and is finding it very hard to get out again,” said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at the Tokyo campus of Temple University.

“From the outset, it really did not communicate well with its neighbours, and it was a case of ‘propose, announce and defend the decision’,” he told This Week in Asia. “And that means the charm offensive has come too late.”

Foreign journalists on a guided tour of the Fukushima nuclear power plant last week amid the first release of treated waste water from the facility. Photo: EPA-EFE

For some countries, criticism of the Fukushima water release has taken on a nationalistic tone, and it will join a long list of other issues – wartime “comfort women” and forced labourers during Japan’s colonial era, competing territorial claims and economic friction, among others – that can be deployed against Tokyo when the need arises, experts suggest.