The government of Japan plans to release more than a million tons of water contaminated by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster into the Pacific Ocean despite intense opposition from local fishermen and environmental groups around the world.
Fukushima was the site of a triple nuclear meltdown following a tsunami and earthquake in 2011. The contaminated water, which is currently stored in more than a thousand tanks, will start being released in 2022 in a decades-long plan that will send the radioactive water into the ocean.
The operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), has estimated that all of the available tanks will be completely full by next summer. The water, which was mixed with water used to stop three damaged reactor cores from melting, amounted to 1.23 million tons last September and is reportedly growing at a rate of 170 tons per day.
A processing system is being used to remove highly radioactive substances from the water, but it is incapable of filtering out everything. For example, tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, cannot be filtered out, among other substances.
Environmental groups have accused the Japanese government of seeking the fastest and most affordable solution at the expense of the environment. They also claim that the government’s focus on the relatively less harmful tritium is a clever way to divert attention from other, more dangerous radioactive elements that remain in the water after filtering, such as strontium, ruthenium, cobalt, rhodium, and iodine.
The country’s suffering fishing industry is also worried. Neighboring South Korea, which has already banned seafood imports from the area, has also voiced concerns, calling discharging the water a “grave threat” to the marine environment. Demand for fish from the area overall has fallen to just a fifth of its level before the disaster.
Adding to concerns is the fact that TEPCO has decided not to allow independent testing because of “safety concerns” related to storing and transporting the radioactive water. Groups like Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre (CNIC) and Greenpeace believe this is merely a coverup of the true extent of contamination.
1 comment:
The Japanese and nuclear power do not mix. Building atomic power plants on a fault line above the ocean thereby subjecting nuclear reactors to destructive tsunamis goes beyond insanity. Wormwood to the nth degree. I wonder what the background radiation level is in Tokyo? the Aleutians? Pearl Harbor? California coastal waters?
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