A Half Year from Discharging Fukushima Water

A half year has passed since Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) started discharging “processed water” into the Pacific Ocean last summer. The greatest concern for Japanese government has been how much it would affect Japanese economy. According to the survey conducted by Kyodo News Agency, eighty percent of fishery organizations realize that they have been suffering from reputational damages, mainly affected by import ban by China. They feel that the compensation for their business is not sufficient.

The survey was made to forty-two fishery co-operatives in prefectures, which are affiliated to Japan Fisheries Co-operatives. Among thirty-six organizations responded, thirteen (36%) answered that they suffered from reputational damages of discharging processed water, and sixteen (40%) were relatively did. Five (13%) were relatively not suffered from and two (5%) did not.

 

The organization suffered from reputational damage were concentrated in the northeastern coast of Japan. Hokkaido, Aomori, Akita, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki and Chiba were among them. On what kind of damages they suffered, twenty-four answered that they could not export their sea products, such as sea cucumbers, scallops or yellowtails, to China or Hong Kong. Eighteen found decline of prices of their products.

 

Since August 24 last year, TEPCO released the processed water, which had been used for cooling crippled nuclear reactors and extracted nuclides except tritium through Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), for three times. Total amount of discharged water is twenty-three thousand metric tons. According to the measurement by TEPCO or the government of Japan, the maximum amount of radiation detected was 22 bq, lower than the line of 700 bq TEPCO has set for stopping discharge.

 

However, as Japan has been saying on various issues including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in US beef, safety is one thing and comfort is another. A spokesperson of Foreign Ministry of China commented in her press conference that the precautionary measures by China were aimed at protecting safety and people’s health. “Japan needs to respond to international concerns with all seriousness, dispose of the nuclear-contaminated water in a responsible way, and offer full cooperation in setting up an independent international monitoring arrangement,” said Mao Ning, deputy director of information in Foreign Ministry.

 

It was reported that both government of Japan and China started new round of talks by experts on the discharge of Fukushima water last month. It was based on a request of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to Xi Jinping, when they met each other in San Francisco last November. The talk is an only channel between the two countries to deal with this sharp opposition over the processed or contaminated water.

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