Global Courant
TOKYO — A global nuclear safety watchdog on Tuesday approved the safety of Japan’s controversial plan to discharge treated wastewater from its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the Pacific Ocean.
The 129-page final report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) paves the way for Japan to give the green light and begin release within weeks.
The process, once started, will be irreversible, although safeguards are in place to stop the release in an emergency. Because water is constantly being generated and accumulated, the discharge will continue for decades until the full decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi, which is expected to occur around 2051.
Despite Japan’s security pledges, its plan has been criticized by its neighbors, including China, South Korea and some Pacific islands. Local fishermen, fearing damage to their livelihoods, have also opposed the discharge.
While the IAEA stressed that its report was “neither a recommendation nor an endorsement” of Japan’s water discharge decree, Tokyo considers it a neutral endorsement to proceed.
Contaminated water is first treated to remove radioactive nuclides, with the exception of tritium, a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen that is a routine by-product of nuclear power plants around the world. It is then further diluted with seawater before being ejected 1 km from the coast.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi told a news conference in Tokyo that his agency’s “comprehensive, neutral, objective and evidence-based” evaluation showed that the planned discharge was in line with global industry and safety standards.
He stressed that the discharge will have a “negligible radiological impact on humans and the environment”, including marine animals and plants.
“This process of dilution and chemical and other filtration is nothing new. It’s something that exists in the industry,” he said, adding that the method is also used by nuclear power plants in countries such as China, South Korea, the United States and France.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, “I will not allow any release that harms people or the environment in Japan or the rest of the world.”
He promised “a high degree of transparency” in the process and said he will continue to provide explanations “based on scientific grounds”.
The IAEA panel consisted of nuclear safety experts from 11 countries, including China, the Marshall Islands, Russia and South Korea. Inter-laboratory testing was also conducted, involving the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety in South Korea.
But the prospect of dumping tons of water from Fukushima — a word marked by the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, which caused one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters — into the Pacific Ocean has huge fears fueled.
Any hope Japan harbored that the IAEA’s report would pave the way forward for water releases — and Tokyo says there is no other way — was quickly dashed.
China, which previously accused Japan of treating the Pacific as its “garbage dump,” said the report doesn’t give Tokyo any legitimacy to proceed.
