The Fukushima Daiichi NPP and its Radioactive Water Problem
From time to time, Korean media and environmentalists associated with them raise the question of an impending global environmental catastrophe, which will happen when the Japanese authorities dump thousands of tons of radioactive water into the sea after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The excitement is fueled by periodic news that the water will soon be drained, and Seoul’s position alone is what keeps Tokyo from making a horrific decision.
Here is a quick refresher on the essence of the problem. Every day since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, due to the penetration of groundwater, which caused a radioactive matter leakage, about 170 tons of radioactively contaminated water was produced, containing the radioactive hydrogen isotope: tritium and other substances. First of all, we are talking about water that was originally in the reactor circuit. Second, on the water used to cool the wreckage of the plant and the remaining fuel. Also, a significant amount of water from underground sources flowing through the land towards the ocean is also being polluted. The water is processed in order to extract the majority of the radioactive material. However, tritium and other substances remain in the water, a huge amount of which is stored in nearly a thousand large cisterns.
Currently, roughly 1.7 million tons of the substance are stored in water tanks, but by the end (or in the worst case, by summer) of 2022, there will be no free storage space left. Since the three exploded reactors are far from dismantling, TEPCO, the operator of the damaged nuclear power plant, demands that the problem of contaminated water be addressed immediately.
The Japanese government calls the stored water “treated water” because it has been treated to take it below the threshold level of 62 types of radioactive substances (not including tritium), but in September 2018, a study of 890,000 tons of treated water was conducted, which showed that more than 80% still contains radioactive substances in excess of threshold levels.
Japanese experts quoted former Prime Minister Abe as claiming that the amount of radioactivity in the water is less than one percent of the amount of radioactivity at the Wolseong nuclear power plant in South Korea. South Korean scientists are skeptical of this statement. In order to compare the pollution levels at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the nuclear power plant in Korea, it should be clarified where the water samples are collected, according to Moon Zhu-hyun, professor of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Dankook University. After a glance at the numbers from different sampling locations, we can provide an accurate comparison of pollution levels.
Choi Sung Min, professor of the department of nuclear and quantum engineering at KAIST, said Seoul and Tokyo should refrain from presenting scientifically unsubstantiated opinions on the matter and exercise caution.
In his article on NVO, Vladimir Odintsov cites a numerous examples of environmental issues that surfaced in 2017-18 – the deposition of cesium-137 on sandy beaches at a considerable distance from the station and detecting its particles in Californian wines, produced after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster; radioactive iodine isotopes and cesium has also been found in vegetables grown in South Korea, as well as in fish caught off the Japanese coast.
TEPCO announced this in August 2019 and put forth a proposal to pump the contaminated water from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi NPP into the Pacific Ocean. All other ways of resolving the problem, according to TEPCO management, are too difficult.
In October 2019, South Korea, at a meeting of the British International Maritime Organization called on Japan to make efforts to reach a consensus from neighboring countries on water management issues.
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