Environmental activists in South Korea are protesting the plan by Japan to dump radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean in 2023.
The nuclear power plant had been damaged during the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that followed it, known as the 'Fukushima nuclear disaster'.
Japan plans to dump over 1 million cubic meters of treated radioactive wastewater, enough to fill 500 Olympic swimming pools, according to the Washington Post, into the ocean in 2023, a decision that has angered not only many in South Korea, but also people other countries living in the Pacific, such as the Northern Mariana Islands, and Fiji.
Vijay Naidu, adjunct professor at the School of Law and Social Sciences at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji said "This water adds to the already nuclear-polluted ocean. This threatens the lives and livelihoods of islanders heavily reliant on marine resources. These include inshore fisheries as well as pelagic fishes such as tuna. The former provides daily sustenance and food security, and the latter much needed foreign exchange via fishing licenses for distant water fishing nation fleets".
Sheila J Babauta, a member of the Northern Mariana Islands’ House of Representatives told Al Jazeera news in January that its government had formed a 'joint resolution' in opposition of any nation wishing to dump nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean.
"The expectation is that the discharge will not happen until 2023. There is time to overturn this decision" Sheila stated. "The effort that went into the creation of the joint resolution exposed to research and reports from Greenpeace East Asia highlighting alternatives for the storage of Japan’s nuclear waste, including the only acceptable option, long-term storage, and processing using the best technology available".
The Japanese government says that have to release the wastewater because they are running out of space to store the water. Both the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have said that they back the decision.
Last year Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the IAEA said that he supports Japan in its decision to release it.
"We will work closely with Japan before, during, and after the discharge of the water. Our cooperation and our presence will help build confidence, in Japan and beyond, that the water disposal is carried out without an adverse impact on human health and the environment" Grossi said.
The Japanese government has said that they will be diluting the water before dumping it into the ocean, but many have voiced concerns that doing this will not actually lower the amount of radioactivity going into the ocean.
Tilman Ruff, associate professor at the Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne in Australia told Al Jazeera "Tritium is a normal contaminant from the discharges, the cooling water from normal reactor operations, but this is the equivalent of several centuries worth of normal production of tritium that’s in this water, so it is a very large amount".
"The government says that it will dilute the water so that it doesn’t exceed the concentration limits that are regulated … It might allow you to tick a regulatory requirement, but it doesn’t actually reduce the amount of radioactivity going into the environment and the amount of radioactivity that is being released here is really critical".
"Obviously, the higher the level of exposure [to radiation], the greater the risk, but there is no level below which there is no effect" Ruff stated. "That is now really fairly conclusively proven, because in the last decade or so there have been impressive very large studies of large numbers of people exposed to low doses of radiation. At levels even a fraction of those that we receive from normal background [radiation] exposure from the rocks, from cosmic radiation. At even those very low levels, harmful effects have been demonstrated".
Ruff does, however, support building more storage facilities for the water so that it can be stored for another 50 or 60 years at which time the majority of the tritium will have decayed.
"Their [CCNE’s] recommendation for the management of the water is that the first thing to do would be to store it in properly built secure long-lived large tanks similar to the ones that Japan uses for its national oil and petroleum reserves … The argument that they make, which, I think, is really very valid, is that, if this water was stored not for an indeterminant period, but even for a period of about 50-60 years, then, by then, the tritium will have decayed to a tiny fraction of what it is today and hardly be an issue" he told Al Jazeera.
The nuclear power plant had been damaged during the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that followed it, known as the 'Fukushima nuclear disaster'.
Japan plans to dump over 1 million cubic meters of treated radioactive wastewater, enough to fill 500 Olympic swimming pools, according to the Washington Post, into the ocean in 2023, a decision that has angered not only many in South Korea, but also people other countries living in the Pacific, such as the Northern Mariana Islands, and Fiji.
Vijay Naidu, adjunct professor at the School of Law and Social Sciences at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji said "This water adds to the already nuclear-polluted ocean. This threatens the lives and livelihoods of islanders heavily reliant on marine resources. These include inshore fisheries as well as pelagic fishes such as tuna. The former provides daily sustenance and food security, and the latter much needed foreign exchange via fishing licenses for distant water fishing nation fleets".
Sheila J Babauta, a member of the Northern Mariana Islands’ House of Representatives told Al Jazeera news in January that its government had formed a 'joint resolution' in opposition of any nation wishing to dump nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean.
"The expectation is that the discharge will not happen until 2023. There is time to overturn this decision" Sheila stated. "The effort that went into the creation of the joint resolution exposed to research and reports from Greenpeace East Asia highlighting alternatives for the storage of Japan’s nuclear waste, including the only acceptable option, long-term storage, and processing using the best technology available".
The Japanese government says that have to release the wastewater because they are running out of space to store the water. Both the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have said that they back the decision.
Last year Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the IAEA said that he supports Japan in its decision to release it.
"We will work closely with Japan before, during, and after the discharge of the water. Our cooperation and our presence will help build confidence, in Japan and beyond, that the water disposal is carried out without an adverse impact on human health and the environment" Grossi said.
The Japanese government has said that they will be diluting the water before dumping it into the ocean, but many have voiced concerns that doing this will not actually lower the amount of radioactivity going into the ocean.
Tilman Ruff, associate professor at the Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne in Australia told Al Jazeera "Tritium is a normal contaminant from the discharges, the cooling water from normal reactor operations, but this is the equivalent of several centuries worth of normal production of tritium that’s in this water, so it is a very large amount".
"The government says that it will dilute the water so that it doesn’t exceed the concentration limits that are regulated … It might allow you to tick a regulatory requirement, but it doesn’t actually reduce the amount of radioactivity going into the environment and the amount of radioactivity that is being released here is really critical".
"Obviously, the higher the level of exposure [to radiation], the greater the risk, but there is no level below which there is no effect" Ruff stated. "That is now really fairly conclusively proven, because in the last decade or so there have been impressive very large studies of large numbers of people exposed to low doses of radiation. At levels even a fraction of those that we receive from normal background [radiation] exposure from the rocks, from cosmic radiation. At even those very low levels, harmful effects have been demonstrated".
Ruff does, however, support building more storage facilities for the water so that it can be stored for another 50 or 60 years at which time the majority of the tritium will have decayed.
"Their [CCNE’s] recommendation for the management of the water is that the first thing to do would be to store it in properly built secure long-lived large tanks similar to the ones that Japan uses for its national oil and petroleum reserves … The argument that they make, which, I think, is really very valid, is that, if this water was stored not for an indeterminant period, but even for a period of about 50-60 years, then, by then, the tritium will have decayed to a tiny fraction of what it is today and hardly be an issue" he told Al Jazeera.