How Safe Is Fukushima Sewage?

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Twelve years after the nuclear accident, Japan began discharging radioactive contaminated water treated by the Fukushima power plant to the Pacific Ocean.

China imposed a ban on Japanese fisheries products and pushed ahead with the release despite protests in Japan and South Korea.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the United Nations said the release would be safe and its impact on people and the environment would be "negligible." But how safe is it?

How and why did the discharge proceed?
An earthquake following the 2011 tsunami caused the Fukushima nuclear accident. The cooling system was destroyed and the reactor core overheated, contaminating the water in the facility with high concentrations of radioactive materials.

Since then, TEPCO has been injecting cooling water to cool the reactor fuel rods. As a result, contaminated water is produced in nuclear power plants every day. This is stored in more than 1,000 tanks and can fill more than 500 Olympic swimming pools.

Japan says it needs land occupied by tanks to build new facilities to safely dismantle nuclear power plants. Concerns have also been raised about the aftermath of the damage to the tank due to natural disasters.

Japan is gradually discharging wastewater into the sea with IAEA approval. Four discharges are scheduled by the end of March 2024, and the first of them was carried out this time. The entire discharge is expected to take at least 30 years.

If Japan had been able to remove all radioactive materials before sending wastewater to the sea, there would not have been enough controversy to trigger such protests and embargoes.

However, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen called tritium is a problem. There is currently no technology to remove this element from contaminated water, so dilution, not removal, is underway

Is it safe?
Not all scientists agree with the impact, but the prevailing opinion of experts is that the release is safe.

Tritium can originally be found in water on Earth. Many scientists argue that low tritium concentrations have little impact. However, there is also a critical opinion that more research is needed on the effects of tritium on seabed and marine life.

The IAEA, which has a permanent office in Fukushima, said an "independent field analysis" found that tritium concentrations in discharged water were "far lower than 1,500 becquerels per liter (Bg/L) set at the upper limit of discharge."

The upper limit is six times lower than 10,000 becquerels per liter, the upper limit of drinking water by the World Health Organization (WHO).

James Smith, a professor of environmental and geology at the University of Portsmouth, said that "in theory, you can drink this water" because wastewater is already purified and diluted when it is stored.

Physicist David Bailey, who runs a radioactivity measurement laboratory in France, also agreed, saying, "What matters is the amount of tritium," so "the concentration is fine with marine life, unless, for example, fish populations are severely reduced."

But there are also scientists who are concerned.

a voice of criticism
In December 2022, the National Oceanographic Research Institute of the United States issued a statement that it could not accept Japan's data as it is.

Robert Richmond, a marine biologist at the University of Hawaii, said in an interview with the BBC, "It seems that the evaluation of radiation and ecological effects was inappropriate. It is concerned that Japan cannot detect what flows into contaminated water, sediment, and organic matter in the evaluation, and that there is no way to remove it even if it detects it. "We can't put the genie back in the bottle once it's out," he said.

Environmental groups such as Greenpeace made more specific arguments, referring to a paper published by scientists at the University of South Carolina in April 2023.

Sean Bunny, chief nuclear expert at Greenpeace's East Asian branch, said that tritium's biological effects on plants and animals were "directly negative," including "decreasing reproductive power" and "damaging cell structures such as DNA."

China banned imports of Japanese marine products in protest of wastewater discharge. Some commentators in the media think the move could be a political response. In particular, some experts say that the concentration of radioactive materials is very low, so there is no scientific basis to support concerns about marine products.

However, many people living in the Pacific Ocean every day cannot hide their concerns.

South Korean haenyeo also expressed anxiety in an interview with BBC Korea.

Kim Eun-ah, who has been a haenyeo in Jeju Island for six years, said, "I have to go to the sea to live, but now I feel that going to the sea itself is not safe."

Experts say the discharged wastewater can be spread by ocean currents, especially the Kuroshio Current across the Pacific Ocean.

Fishermen told the BBC they were concerned about permanent decline in confidence and were also concerned about jobs.

Mark Brown, chairman of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and Prime Minister of Cook Islands, said he believes the release "meets international safety standards," as does the IAEA.

He urged all countries in the region to "scientifically evaluate" this "complex" issue, although they may disagree.

But Emily Hammond, an American professor of energy and environmental law at George Washington University, said. "The difficulty with radionuclides is that they pose a question that science cannot answer completely. In other words, the question is what is the standard of 'safe' when exposed to very low concentrations."

"No matter how much trust someone gives to the IAEA, at the same time, we can recognize that compliance with standards does not mean that environmental and human impacts are "zero."