After a news conference hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi made his way out of the room surrounded by guards on July 4 in Tokyo, Japan. Amid the chaos, a reporter from the Republic of Korea (ROK) followed closely behind him, pushing and elbowing the guards and repeatedly shouting at Grossi, "You received 1 million euros ($1.12 million) from Japan?" Grossi, just moments after stepping out the door, abruptly halted and turned back, responding angrily, "I didn't receive anything. This is absurd. Absurd!"

Earlier that same day, the IAEA had issued a report announcing the Japanese Government's plan to discharge nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant "meets the IAEA's safety standards."

Within weeks, Japan is scheduled to start releasing more than 1 million tons of nuclear-contaminated water currently being stored at the crippled power plant. Instead of easing concerns among neighboring countries and activists, the endorsement has triggered strong disapproval throughout the world.

Flame of resistance

"The IAEA's safety report on Japan's plan failed to fully reflect the opinions of all experts involved in the review and the conclusions were limited and biased," Deng Ge, Secretary General of the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA), said on July 4.

China expressed regret that the IAEA had hastily released the report, Deng said. China has urged Japan to face up to the legitimate and reasonable concerns of the international community, as well as the opinions of the IAEA and other international professional and authoritative agencies.

"If you take even just a brief look at recent media coverage, you will find that the IAEA safety review has indeed been controversial. Experts who participated in the review have expressed views different from the final report. That is an indisputable fact. Japan can't just use the IAEA report as a 'greenlight' for the ocean discharge," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a news briefing on July 11.

The CAEA's stated position is that Japan has not sufficiently demonstrated the legitimacy of the decision to discharge the nuclear-contaminated water into the sea. "Even if the IAEA safety standards are met, they can't prove that the discharge plan is the only or best solution for the disposal of the wastewater," Deng said.

Japanese activists expressed their deep disappointment with the IAEA's decision, emphasizing their refusal to let their own government off the hook. According to the Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post, Hideyuki Ban, a co-director of the Tokyo-based Citizen's Nuclear Information Center, said the government went back on its promise that "the water would not be released until the plan received the acceptance of the public, and that has clearly not happened."

Even when the ROK's ruling People Power Party joined the IAEA in endorsing the safety of Japan's discharge plan, members of the opposing Liberal Democratic Party, which controls the majority in the parliament, sharply criticized Grossi during a meeting with him in Seoul on July 9 that aimed to provide reassurance to the ROK on the IAEA's findings. "Protesters were screaming outside the door" during the meeting, the Associated Press reported.

According to a survey in May by local pollster Research View, over 85 percent of people in the ROK oppose Japan's discharge plan. The survey, which involved 1,000 participants, revealed that seven out of 10 individuals planned to reduce their seafood consumption if the wastewater release proceeded. Even Prime Minister Han Duck-soo's offer to drink treated Fukushima water failed to soothe the critics.

"If you think [the wastewater] is safe, I wonder whether you would be willing to suggest the Japanese Government use that water for drinking or for industrial and agricultural purposes, rather than dumping it in the sea," Woo Won-shik, a ROK Democratic Party lawmaker, told Grossi at the meeting.

Earlier this year, Pacific island nations called on Japan to work with them to find a solution to the wastewater release issue. "Japan should hold off on any such release until we are certain about the implications of this proposal on the environment and on human health, especially recognizing that the majority of our Pacific peoples are coastal peoples, and that the ocean continues to be an integral part of their subsistence living," Henry Puna, Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum, wrote in an opinion piece published in British newspaper The Guardian on January 4.

Threat to the environment

Japan has not yet proved that the discharge plan will be harmless to the marine environment and human health. The Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater contains more than 60 types of radionuclides, unstable chemicals that release radiation as they break down, many of which can't be effectively treated or removed. Some of the long-lived nuclides may spread with ocean currents, bringing uncertainties to the ecological balance and marine environment in the waters of neighboring countries, according to the CAEA.

Yen-Chiang Chang, a professor at Dalian Maritime University's School of Law, explained to ThePaper.cn that the IAEA's report on Japan's planned discharge has limitations and lacks comprehensive and justified analysis. Nor did it conduct an all-round review of the effectiveness of the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), a water purification system adopted by Japan to treat the nuclear-contaminated water, in removing radioactive nuclides.

Chang said currently there is no single international organization with the sole authority to determine whether Japan has the permission to discharge nuclear-contaminated water into the sea. "Such a decision should be based on international law, especially the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as Japan is a party to the convention."

"If Japan intends to discharge the wastewater, it must choose a way that minimizes the impact on human beings and the marine environment. But the chosen method appears to have the opposite effect, causing grave impact," he added.

"The ALPS has been a spectacular failure, with major doubts about its effectiveness," Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist with Greenpeace East Asia, wrote in a piece for China Daily on June 13. He pointed out that about 70 percent, or 931,600 cubic meters of the wastewater, needs to be processed again (and probably many times again) by the ALPS to bring the radioactive concentration levels below the regulatory limit for discharge. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), owner of the Fukushima nuclear plant, has succeeded in reducing the concentration levels of strontium, iodine and plutonium in only 0.2 percent of the total volume of the wastewater, and it still requires further processing. "But no secondary processing has taken place in the past nearly three years. Neither TEPCO nor the Japanese Government nor the IAEA wants to talk about this," Burnie added.

The U.S. National Association of Marine Laboratories also opposes Japan's planned discharge, according to a position paper it released in December 2022. It indicated that instead of offering adequate and accurate scientific data supporting the safety of the plan, there was an abundance of data demonstrating serious concerns about the release of the wastewater.

It ignores the reality of biological processes such as organic binding, bioaccumulation and bioconcentration, as well as accumulation in local seafloor sediments. Many of the radioactive nuclides contained in the wastewater have half-lives ranging from decades to centuries, and their deleterious effects range from DNA damage and cellular stress to elevated cancer risks in people who eat affected marine organisms, such as oysters, shrimp and fish, the paper said.

"At a time when our oceans are under multiple threats, including those from melting glaciers and related climate emergencies, overfishing and biodiversity loss and plastic pollution—there is no reason why Japan should be allowed to dump the radioactive water into the sea," Burnie stressed.

(Print Edition Title: Tainted Tides)

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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