Photo shows people protesting against Japan's nuclear wastewater discharge plan in Seoul, South Korea, July 8, 2023. (PHOTO: XINHUA)

ByWANG Xiaoxia & LIANG Yilian

Nextmonth, Japan will start to discharge more than a million ton ofnuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station,which suffered a meltdown due to an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, into thePacific Ocean. It is unprecedented in the history of the nuclear industry andwill bring long-term and unpredictable consequences, scientists and researcherssaid at a seminar organized by China Association for Science and Technology inBeijing on July 18.

TheInternational Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently said Japan’s plan todischarge the “treated” contaminated water into the ocean is consistent withIAEA safety standards. This will undoubtedly embolden Japan to press ahead withthe plan despite the objections of neighboring regions, although IAEA DirectorGeneral Rafael Mariano Grossi has said that the report is neither arecommendation nor an endorsement of the discharge policy. 

“Treated water”?

Japan’socean discharge plan is largely limited and incomplete, and its so-called“treated water” should be questioned.

Thecontaminated water produced by a nuclear accident is different from thewastewater produced by normal nuclear station operations. It contains morepowerful and complex radionuclides said Liu Xinhua, chief expert at the Nuclearand Radiation Safety Center of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment(MEE). 

Theplan has focused on the treatment of tritium and carbon-14, which is the commondifficulty faced by the nuclear industry and makes the plan sound more acceptable.Meanwhile, it fudged the other radionuclides that Japan is able to treat, saidWang Jianlong, a professor from the Institute of Nuclear and New EnergyTechnology, Tsinghua University.

Unpredictable consequences

Thereliability and long-term effectiveness of Japan’s purification facility, theadvanced liquid processing system (ALPS), remains untested. The ALPS has neverbeen used to treat such a huge amount of contaminated water from a nuclearaccident, and nobody knows whether it will work in the next three decades, Wangpointed out.

Eventhough treated by the ALPS, and diluted by seawater, radionuclides mayaccumulate and concentrate in marine organisms. It takes 12.3 years for tritiumand 5,730 years for carbon-14 to decay naturally in the ocean, said Li Yun, anengineer from the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center.

Itrequires more studies on the long-term accumulation and concentration ofradionuclides. Their impact on marine life and human health will be tested overtime, said Wang.

Oncereleased, there's no way to put the genie back into the bottle.