Purify, Dilute and Dump

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) started discharging “processed” water into the Pacific Ocean on August 24^thwith support of the government of Japan. While the government, having been leading the policy of releasing the water from storage tanks to the sea, insisted that it had received understandings on the project to a certain degree, there still are fundamental anxieties among the local stakeholders including fishermen about the released water in which radioactive material remains. The decision brought a fresh antagonism in the Northeast Asia, as China immediately raised the level of its regulation by banning all the seafood products from Japan. Although government of Japan expressed its objection against China through diplomatic channels, the impact of disseminating once contaminated water on regional relations and domestic seafood business must be beyond what it had anticipated. It is unclear whether Japan can manage the issue until the end of the discharging, which is expected to last for 30 or 40 years.

 

TEPCO should have known that a huge amount of contaminated water would be produced, at least at the time when it decided to cool the reactors down by soaking them into the water right after the accident of the Fukushima First Nuclear Power Plant in 2011. Unfortunately, it was later found that underground water was constantly flowing into the plant, increasing contaminated water by touching radioactive nuclear fuels. Although they pumped the water up and stored in the tanks, but the water going nowhere increased day after day.

 

The reason why the government of Japan decided to join the effort of dealing with the contaminated water was to make a legacy for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Not only it was doubted that the contaminated underground water had been flowing into the sea, the radioactive water after used for cooling the reactor was found to be leaked from the storage tanks. To win the ticket of Tokyo Olympic Games 2020, Abe had to remove the international skepticisms about Japan’s ability of managing the wasted water, and declared “Some may have concerns about Fukushima. Let me assure you, the situation is under control” at the International Olympic Committee Session in Buenos Aires in September, 2013.

 

To implement the pledge to the world, Abe embarked on controlling the Fukushima water and secured budgetary resources. However, the government could not put the water under control. The greatest miscalculation was tritium, a radioactive material difficult to separate from water, remaining even after going through the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS). The contaminated water kept on accumulated as turning into the “processed” water.

 

The man who made a decision to discharge the processed water into the sea was Abe’s successor, Yoshihide Suga. In April, 2021, Suga Cabinet made a conclusion to release the water into the sea after diluted to the concentration of 1,500 bq/l or less, as low as the one fortieth of the governmental standard. The government started building the pipeline between the plant and the place 1 kilometer offshore the plant where the processed water would be released. And Kishida administration declared to start discharging “in around this spring or summer” early this year. Those activities were made without any consent from the people or fishermen in Fukushima. The government has been enthusiastic in collecting international “understandings” on Japan’s project, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United States or relatively pro-Japan administration in the Republic of Korea. Finally, Kishida announced the beginning of discharging soon after a trilateral leaders’ meeting with U.S. and ROK in Camp David.

 

The cause Suga and Kishida raised for their decisions was that solving this problem could not be postponed. The tanks filled with the processed water have been increasing in the site of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and the site has no more space to build new tanks. However, there were no sign that TEPCO has considered building tanks outside the site. Even though finding new site for the tanks will face another protest from the local community, that cannot draw a conclusion of discharging the water with uncertain safety.

 

The most controversial activity that the government and TEPCO made in these twelve years since the great earthquake was a pledge to the fishermen in Fukushima in 2015: “We will never make any disposal of the treated water without an understanding of the stakeholders.” Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations has been protesting against discharging processed water and issued a statement of its chairman on the day of starting discharging, which firmly opposed to the government’s decision. In the statement, it is described that while a progress has been made for better understandings with IAEA report or commitment of the government and TEPCO for dismantling the broken reactors, scientific safety is different from social comfort. The government too much focused on achieving a progress to get better understandings from the fishermen.

 

Even if the fishermen understand the standpoint of the government and TEPCO to a certain degree, it does not assure the safety of treated water. The comprehensive report of IAEA concluded that “the discharge of the ALPS treated water, as currently planned by TEPCO, will have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.” In 2018, news reports revealed that some radioactive materials other than tritium, such as iodine 129 or strontium 90, were still remaining in the treated water after processing through ALPS. There are arguments inside and outside Japan that ALPS processed water is not completely safe. Another criticism is that the discharging the ALPS water violates IAEA’s fundamental safety principle #4, which requires the facilities or activities “the benefits that they yield must outweigh the radiation risks to which they give rise.”

 

However, the main problem may not about safety of treated water or fish in Fukushima, but the credibility of information or the government of Japan itself. Negative impacts came from outside Japan. Chinese government banned import of all the Japanese seafood products immediately after Japan started releasing the processed water. A Chinese customs authorities reportedly explained that the reason of the tight regulation was a deep concern of radiation to protect lives and health of the people. There are a lot of food exporters in Japan which received cancellation of contracts from their business counterparts in China. A number of offices that were not directly related to discharging Fukushima water received phone calls, which was indicated as a call from China with the country code of +86, criticizing Japan of releasing contaminated water. There were no warning from Japanese government to the business sectors in Japan on the possibility of those hard response before it decided discharging the water.

 

Although Japanese government and TEPCO emphasizes that the discharging will remove the greatest obstacle for the decommissioning project, it does not guarantee the acceleration of the decommissioning project. The most difficult part of the project is taking the debris of nuclear fuel out of crippled reactors. According to the plan of TEPCO, the process would have been starting 2021. TEPCO explains that it was delayed by broad infection of COVID-19. There is so far no sign of implementing the revised plan that hopes to make the first removal of debris in the second half of FY 2023.

 

Moreover, TEPCO has not announced the technical method of taking the debris out, where the debris will be stored or how they keep it for decades. Even how the discharging project is successfully operated, no one can promise that TEPCO will be able to finish the decommissioning process of the broken nuclear power plant within 30 to 40 years. Reconstruction of Fukushima depends on how long it takes to the decommission, because the evacuees of Fukushima have to return to their hometown as soon as possible without a fear of radiation.