Workers at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station work among underground water storage pools on 17 April 2013. Two types of above-ground storage tanks rise in the background. An IAEA expert team visited the site on 17 April 2013 as part of a mission to review Japan’s plans to decommission the facility. Photo: Greg Webb / IAEA / Wikimedia Commons
Dumping treated radioactive water into the ocean generally strikes most people as a bad idea. On its face it sure does sound dumb, but the United Nations nuclear watchdog has approved a plan for Japan to release a bunch of it from the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the Pacific Ocean.
The plan has been thoroughly studied by a handful of different agencies, all of which decided it was safe. Still, though, it’s making a lot of folks more than a little uncomfortable.
On July 4, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) handed their report to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. It came to the conclusion that it was indeed okay to release the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station’s water into the sea.
It’s been more than a decade since that horrific tragedy. On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Japan. The subsequent tsunami killed more than 18,000 people and smashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, destroying its power supply and the exceedingly important cooling stations. Without those stations, a nuclear meltdown occurs, which is obviously a very bad thing. Despite the Japanese authorities’ best attempts, three of the reactors did just that, dumping way too much radiation into the atmosphere.
Now though, after 12 years, there’s still a whole bunch of wastewater sitting around. About 1,000 tanks were used to store the radioactive water — both from the tsunami and from the cooling systems around the reactors — and no one really knew what to do with it.
According to reports, there are about 1.3 million tons of of radioactive wastewater in Fukushima. It’s been treated relentlessly to remove most of the radioactive nuclides, but there’s still a bit of something called tritium. It’s not super dangerous, but it’s really hard to separate it from water. Before Japan releases that water, they’ll need to dilute the water to bring the tritium to below regulatory standards.
“Based on its comprehensive assessment, the IAEA has concluded that the approach and activities to the discharge of ALPS treated water taken by Japan are consistent with relevant international safety standards,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi wrote in the report. “Furthermore, the IAEA notes the controlled, gradual discharges of the treated water to the sea, as currently planned and assessed by TEPCO, would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.”
Still, though, a lot of people hate the idea. Greenpeace, as you’d expect, is staunchly against the plan.
“The nations of the G7 have chosen politics over science and the protection of the marine environment with their decision today to support the Japanese government’s plans to discharge Fukushima radioactive waste water into the Pacific Ocean,” the organization wrote in a press release. “…The marine environment is under extreme pressure from climate change, overfishing and resource extraction. Yet, the G7 thinks it’s acceptable to endorse plans to deliberately dump nuclear waste into the ocean. Politics inside the G7 at Sapporo just trumped science, environmental protection, and international law.”
It’s unlikely that anyone’s qualms will affect the decision, though, and we’re likely to see the plan go ahead.
