> Japan says all radioactive elements have been filtered out except tritium, which is hard to remove from water. The hydrogen isotope is also discharged – at higher levels – by operational nuclear power plants, including in China and France.
> That water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organization drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre, according to Tepco. A becquerel is a measure of radioactivity.
> Monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has backed the plan, will be on-site for the discharge, and samples of water and fish will be taken.
Fear of radiation, fear that the Japanese government / Fukushima’s owners can’t be trusted to release only what they say they will. Personally it seems safe to me and I’m confident the IAEA’s monitoring will be effective, but then again I’m living on the other side of the planet, so …
To be fair, TEPCO is completely and absolutely untrustworthy. There is evidence of severe miss-management, as well as 2 cases where they deliberately ignored safety warning from government agencies.
As a Japanese citizen, I would feel safer seeing the TEPCO corporation dismantled, and it's leadership behind bars. But the courts declared them not guilty.
A late addition, but I should also add info about Onagawa Nuclear Powerplant. It survived the exact same disaster with no melt down, only because the manager staunchly refused to back down on constant safety training and disaster drills. Of course, to the frustration and chagrin of upper management.
Japan has spent more than ¥4 trillion on the decontamination effort so far. So it's definitely not true that they have spent more on propaganda than "actually dealing with the problem".
> Total decontamination costs have exceeded 4 trillion yen as of the end of December. Going forward, additional costs are projected to grow by trillions of yen. [1]
Is ¥70 billion a lot? Sure. But to put it in perspective, more than $14 billion (¥2 trillion) was spent on federal election campaigns in the US in 2020 [2]. Gaining public favor is expensive in a democratic country. And misinformation is a real problem with real costs (e.g. to Japan’s fishing industry) - so it makes sense economically as well as politically.
So people don't trust the Japanese government or TEPCO. That's fine, and that's why the IAEA is there monitoring. Don't trust the IAEA? I feel like anyone should be able to conduct independent testing on water and fish samples from the area.
You can trust the IAEA to actually do monitoring, and also believe that monitoring might be not effective enough. The IAEA failed to effectively monitor the Iranian nuclear program for more than a decade, so why should we expect the opposite?
> I feel like anyone should be able to conduct independent testing on water and fish samples from the area.
You have to tap into the wastewater source, which is much more hard to do independently and also why the IAEA had to show up. The wastewater will then be subject to the ocean currents, so the actual effect would be inconsistent and delayed (up to 10 years, according to simulations). At that point nothing could be done about the year-long dump.
> The IAEA failed to effectively monitor the Iranian nuclear program for more than a decade,
Wwhich decade was that then (more to the point why did they fail to monitor if they were montoring?)
There's a big difference between easy monitoring of peacetime allied country nuclear reactors and monitoring the enrichment program of a country actively attempting to develp weapons grade material in the absence of any binding agreements.
> [Which] decade was that then (more to the point why did they fail to monitor if they were montoring?)
2009--2019 if my understanding is correct. Note that this period does overlap with major sanctions against Iran, and since the IAEA itself later acknowledged the breach of agreements in this period, it's fair to say that the IAEA monitoring was not as effective compared to Western intelligences.
> There's a big difference between easy monitoring of peacetime allied country nuclear reactors and monitoring the enrichment program of a country actively attempting to develp weapons grade material in the absence of any binding agreements.
This doesn't matter, because it does show that countries can hide (or more accurately, delay the detection of) evidences if they are really willing to do so. And the absence of any binding agreements actually gives Japan more incentive to do that.
> The wastewater will then be subject to the ocean currents, so the actual effect would be inconsistent and delayed (up to 10 years, according to simulations).
Sure, see Yi Liu, et al. (2021) [1] and Kim, Kyeong Ok, et al. (2023) [2]. AFAIK they all predict a rapid initial diffusion into the Pacific ocean with a much delayed inflow back to the Korean waters among others.
> [...] fear that the Japanese government / Fukushima’s owners can’t be trusted to release only what they say they will.
Especially given the fact that Naoto Kan, the prime minister of Japan at the time of the Fukushima accident, had to go to the TEPCO HQ to force them to continue the response instead of giving up and watching a full meltdown. Japan has a lot to do in order to regain the lost trust.
Regaining trust is IMO, impossible with all current politicians.
The government has basically designated the nuclear agency seat as a "Send the guy we don't like there" seat. Only incompetent idiots have been placed there since Fukushima.
Add in all the BS red-tape that the government made up, the notoriously slow bureaucracy, and sometimes even sabotage? (Combine that with the new nuclear regulation agency created after Fukushima, which complicates it further) It's not happening without a strongman leading the charge and really forcing it.
Would be great if we could copy-paste France's setup. But Japan is obtuse and inflexible.
This was exactly what I thought when I first started hearing about this, and is even more what I think now after hearing statements from China.
China's statements are sleazy in my opinion. The way they word things makes it sound like Japan is irresponsibly doing whatever they like without oversight, and the world should be doing something about it.
None, groups like Greenpeace and various green parties throughout Europe are being China's useful idiots. Fukushima-Daishi is going to release 900 TBq in a whole ocean over multiple years, and that dose is already estimated by taking the worst numbers we could imagine.
La Hague's retreatment plant puts out 13000 TBq per year, and no one ever cared, nor did anyone see changes in the environment.
Not to mention that humans do not metabolize Tritium, it'll never stay in the human body for more than a few hours. You're more likely to die from the salt in that water than the tritium.
10,000 is very high and this level will be lowered hopefully in time.
In Ontario Canada:
20 Bq/L limit proposed by the Ontario Drinking Water Advisory Council (ODWAC)
190 is 10 times that limit.
This isn't only about drinking water it's about eating seafood that has absorbed these chemicals (or eaten many fish who have absorbed them). I could understand the caution around seafood in that area for a period of time.
This isn't drinking water, though. This is the concentration in water that is going to be discharged into the ocean and rapidly diluted even further (1 - 2 Bq/L within a few km of where it's being discharged, and difficult to distinguish from background levels in the ocean beyond that [1]).
And as the article notes, there are active Nuclear power plants in France and China (and South Korea [2]) that discharge even more tritium per year than is planned at Fukushima. Should people also be cautious about eating seafood from those regions as well?
It depends on the exact elements that are causing that emission level. Heavy metals such as those present in nuclear waste tend to bio-accumulate in marine organisms, that then find their way into the food chain.
This is unlike, say, naturally radioactive carbon or potassium isotopes, that have a relatively constant concentration in the animal's body over it's life time - if a fish eats some high potassium food, it will excrete an equivalent of his own equally radioactive amount to maintain homeostasis.
It's for this exact reason the net "banana dose" of radiation, unless you are potassium deficient, is in fact zero.
TEPCO did not detect any iron 55 or selenium 79, yet they are included in their estimates, at the worst possible doses, explcitly for safety. The amounts rejected and the radiation it exposes you to is about as harmful as living a few floors higher up that what you do. It's nothing.
Your body now emits 5000 becquerels, which is around 70 becquerels per liter of your body. So that Fukushima radioactive water is only 2-3 times more radioactive than you.
That is why 20 Bq/L limit proposed by the ODWAC does not make much sense.
Napkin math of 1.25 million tons of water is about 34,000 tanker trailers, or 3 a day over 30 years. So why doesn't JP just dump it in Lake Inawashiro a couple hours drive west? It's safe after all. Cost seems trivial. Except no one trusts TEPCO. Least of all the Japanese. Why would region trust JP any more? Dumping is offloading a domestic political problem to an international one because radiation + Japan + politcs = bad time. Enough that they're willing to give up to 600M in fish exports per year instead of dumping this very safe water on Japanese soil.
Why don't you just drink bleach instead of wiping down your countertop with it?
Seriously, I have a hard time assuming good will from your post if you do not try to differentiate the amount of dilution happening in a 100km2 50m deep lake vs a 100,000,000km2-sized 5,000m deep ocean.
This seems also the only real problem left to me. I have no doubts that they get the concentration low enough. But I wonder how likely it is that there are still particles left in the water that in isolation might have unacceptable radiation/toxicity levels.
> As expected, China has imposed a blanket ban on all Japanese seafood.
> Beijing announced some restrictions last month, but they were limited to 10 prefectures in Japan, including Fukushima and Tokyo. Earlier this week, Hong Kong announced a similar 10 prefecture ban on ‘aquatic produce’.
> South Korea, too, still blocks seafood imports from the Fukushima area. It's a ban that's been in place since 2013 and, although the government's political stance has softened, it is one that it has no intention of lifting.
> These are major customers for Japan and represent a lot of lost business. Nowhere buys more Japanese seafood than mainland China, which imported more than $600m worth last year. Remarkably, Hong Kong is only just behind - spending $520m on marine produce from Japan.
> Given China's consistent and vocal opposition to the wastewater release, it's a scenario that Japan's government probably envisaged. In the short-term, it admits businesses will take a 'significant' hit.
> In this sense, China understands the economic leverage it has over Japan and the question is whether Hong Kong will follow the mainland’s lead with another all-out ban.
> Either way, we're talking about major disruption for Japan's seafood industry and for restaurants in Hong Kong and China.
Why does this only compare tritium, which is the supposedly safe material? What about "cesium, cobalt, lithium, and strontium" which are supposedly more dangerous?
Those elements have already been filtered out [1]:
> Radioactive materials such as cesium, strontium, iodine, and cobalt are purified by ALPS through co-precipitation treatment using solutions and adsorption on activated carbon and adsorbents. Almost all radioactive materials are removed through repeated treatment by ALPS, but tritium, which is a radioisotope of hydrogen, exists as a part of the water molecule and cannot be removed through treatment by ALPS and other equipment.
It's only tritium that can't be removed (and that is why it is released by other nuclear power plants - in larger quantities that is planned here - as part of normal operation).
The anti-nuclear stance of the Greens can't be judged in isolation and must be seen in the context of the Cold War and the impeding Nuclear Armageddon.
I don't necessarily agree with the Greens but I remember this perilous time very well. And it was the incumbent non-Green powers who created this situation.
Furthermore, this is not the only theme the Greens pressed on and I must admit our country is already much much better for it ( cleaner air, cleaner waters ).
The management of the establishment was what killed the vibe for fission energy. And in this regard the greens where right.
Many facilities (back then and now) where unsafe (e.g. Ukranie) and are still a threat (e.g. France)
Add to that the short sighted actions by everyone involved. (DROPPING barrels in an abandoned mine for final storage, just to find out it does not only totally leak, but advisors precisely warned about it beeing not a suitable location (germany))
For me that's enogh to loose trust in governments and companies beeing able to run such an operation. Fukushima beeing the final nail to this coffin for many.
Maybe when we can proof the reliability, safety and waste efficiency of modern reactor systems, we can rebuild this trust. But either way, we are surely talking 20-60 years. It's scorched earth.
> DROPPING barrels in an abandoned mine for final storage, just to find out it does not only totally leak, but advisors precisely warned about it beeing not a suitable location
And this is a massive political issue with which the Green parties collect millions of votes. Meanwhile "of 265 US power plants that monitor groundwater, 242 report unsafe levels of at least one pollutant derived from coal ash" - so instead of the small potential of ground water contamination from a small number of nuclear plant waste barrels, people passively chose the almost certainty of ground water contamination by leachate containing arsenic, barium, beryllium, boron, cadmium, nickel, lead, mercury, molybdenum, selenium and thallium - a chunk of it radioactive.
The design, deployment, regulatory/political hurdles, and the long operational lifetime of nuclear power plants, make that any improvements take a loooonng time to bear fruit.
Inertia of the installed base with its problems (and history), makes new development near-impossible.
That situation propably won't improve until newer designs accumulate a multi-decade track record of safety, or fusion power gets commercialized.
These facts won't convince people who believe in homeopathy, of which there are plenty. Of course there shouldn't be a controversy, but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that there is, considering the amount of anti-scientific sentiments in the general population.
According to homeopathy, it does become potent, yes, but not poisonous, because it will magically heal whatever disease ingesting shit causes.
With one caveat: homeopathy says that the water has to be diluted by a certain process which involves tapping it ten times during full moon or some non-sense like that.
The reaction of China and South Korea is hilariously hypocritical. Both countries have been dumping nuclear waste water in the ocean for years - and continue doing that.
You do realize that neither South Korea nor China has ever dumped any nuclear POLLUTED (directly in contact with core) water into the ocean? I do not know where you come from, but blind trust in the Japanese government or TEPCO could also be geopolitics at it's worst. Especially if you consider that many of the families influential of Japanese politics during WW2 when they did horrible things in Korea and China still have influence today (unlike the case in Germany), taking the point of view from those who got invaded and lost tens of millions of lives, many in horrific massacres comparable to the holocaust, perhaps merely distrust is itself already very generous. I would favor the stance to demand more transparency and even more independent international investigation before measures are taken than to brush it off as no issue, even if only just for the peace of mind to the people of Korea and China.
So why not dump this very safe water on Japanese soil? There's lakes and reservoirs a short drive away. A few tankers a day over 30 years to clear up 1.25 million tons is cheap to losing 600M of fish exports per year to PRC and barely impact local enviroment on time scales involved. Maybe inspire some new Godzilla movies. Oh wait, it's because Japanese domestic politics wouldn't allow it. So gov would rather internationalize the issue.
Because that's not how dilution works? That part should be incredibly obvious.
I keep seeing this nonsense about "why not dump it into the dirt", as if that ever made any sense. The answer is always simple, there is already a massive amount of Tritium in the ocean.
The water, is also literally sea water. It is salt water taken from the ocean, now with some radioactive isotopes of hydrogen (H20 remember?) which is called tritium. The dilution process literally takes sea water, and mixes it.
Dumping salt water into a local lake or river, or the dirt is literally what starts ecological disasters. But you didn't even do basic research did you?
It makes sense BECAUSE that's exactly how dilution works. Diluting in Japanese lakes (or just the closest) is still as safe as diluting the fucking ocean because japanese lakes are also fucking massive relative to volume of water to be released. Politicians chose ocean because domestic politics. Use your brain and do some basic math. Dump all 1.25 tons / 1.2B litres / 660T becquerels into Lake Inawashiro @ 5.4km3 / 5.4T litres and it'll work out to ~120 becquerels of tritium per litre, still less than WHO limit of 10,000 per litre for drinking water. Diluting 1/5400 of the one lake with some salt water, +0.01% salienty, which is... drum roll fresh water territory. That's dumping everything at once. Now spread it out over 30 years. Spread that out over even more bodies of water and it's even more trivial. JP gov chose negligible domestic ecologic disaster with terrible domestic optics that will affect domestic sentiment and governance for negligible chance of international disaster with more managable optics. Which is still based on assumption that TEPCO can be trusted for decades and release will indeed be negligible. But we both know that's far from certain given reputation, hence JP gov would rather hedge by offloading potential political fallout into international commons, because they can't trust TEPCO not to fuck around on the time scale involved, so best not even risk something as sensitive as more radiation drama on JP soil. They'd rather risk losing 100s of billions in fishing exports than potential domestic ire. Which is fine. But also recognize this issue has as much if not more politics considerations than science. But you didn't even do basic political/geopolitical thinking relative to science did you?
Ok, lets take this at face value. Does any, and I do mean literally any country on this planet, dump their tritium water in the local lake?
Problem 1 : Water extraction
Extracting large volumes of water, is naturally not a ecologically friendly practice. It's actually one of the large barriers stopping us from solving water issues via large scale desalination. Ecological damage includes animals being sucked in, to higher water temperatures causing algae blooms. (Moving all that water, does overall increase the water temperature) Furthermore, it may actually case over-oxygenation of the water, which can cause it's own set of problems. But I'm not a specialist so I will leave that topic as "I have heard of this thing".
Problem 2 : Actual dilution
That's not all though. You need to ensure local PH balances are stable. Since we are starting off by using ocean water (it was the closest and most viable option), you now have to do an ecological analysis of the lake, and make the water match the lake's overall water profile. That requires a whole other set of equipment, and imported materials to balance it out. Of course, "it's relatively speaking, a drop in an lake", but that's the thing, it's a lake. It doesn't have ocean currents.
The Lake is overall a enclosed environment, when compared to the ocean. And it is one hell of a lot more expensive than the ocean, which is right next door!
Now lets take your number, 120 becquerels of tritium per liter. Lets ignore the WHO safe level for a moment. Since our goal is diluting it, preferably, we won't appreciably change the per-liter value of tritium in fresh water. But that's not the case is it? The natural background amount of tritium in 1cubic liter in surface water is around 0.4–1.2 Bq/L. So your proposal, increases the amount by 100x. That misses the entire point of "dilution", which is why I said it doesn't count. When you dilute something like this, the whole point is to dilute in a manner that makes environmental effects negligible. Your proposal, misses the entire point.
Further more, they are only releasing ~28becquerels (officially it is 22becquerels) per year into the ocean, to ensure proper dilution. Divide 28 by 365 days, that is 0.077becquerels per cubic liter (rounded up), in an entire 24 hour cycle! Which would bring it very close to the natural background! This is dilution! This is the bloody point of it all!
Dumping it all in a lake, makes this completely pointless!
Problem 3 : Logistics (AKA, why are we even transporting this?)
This one is simple. Why in the actual hell, would you spend time and risk a truck flipping, rather than just use the pipe you already have and release into the ocean? And this ties into the two previous comments. You have to extract water from the lake, bring it to the water storage facility, mix it, then transport it back.
Or take sea water, desalinate it, then get it to the correct profile, then transport... The amount of extra steps, and chances for human error are significantly higher. It's impractical, and a waste of time.
Problem 4 : Local Resistance (Or domestic politics)
Naturally, locals don't like it. It doesn't matter if it's safe, or checked by independent auditors or international organizations. Humans are overall, emotional, social creatures. Not logical ones. Local pressure is naturally easier to evade if you say "It won't be your problem in the future", which is unfortunately how humans work. Hell, if I had the money, I'd buy the lake (which isn't possible), and let them dump it there (Which I cant, because the fresh-water underground water table is legally protected). Of course, I would tell them "It won't be a problem in 14 years, due to the half-life", but they won't care.
Non-salt water is also significantly more valuable than salt water. It's the difference between incredibly energy intensive and expensive desalination and, just not needing it. People care more about non-salt water than salt water.
I'd happily drink it, assuming it's boiled and de-salted. (And I am not being facetious)
You're drawing some arbituary point of even more negligible dilution when mathematically, flat out dumping everything straight into Inawashiro is still merely 1% of WHO limit for safe drinking water. It would already be adequately diluted for human health. It's already likely sufficiently negligible considering the ratio of solution:solvent. Spread that over 30/50 or whatever years over water cycles and different locations and it's even less of an issue. It would be bloody diluted regardless, especially so when titrated on multi decade time scale. I'd happily drink it. And I am not being facetious.
Ultimately, regardless of feasibility, it's simply a solution which they didn't even consider, because again, as you recognized why would they. That's politically suicide even if it's deemed ecologically sound plan. Which circles back to your first point, does any country dump tritium in their local lake? Not publically, and Fukushima is notoriously public politics. But you know what most try to do with nuclear waste? They attempt to engineer supremely expensive local storage solutions, and frequently fail only to spend stupid resources to warehouses it domestically, instead of dumping that into the commons. It's 60 olympic swimming pools worth of water. It's trivial storage problem for nation state. Hence problem 1/2/3 isn't even a problem especially if they bothered with local dumping studies which again, is 3 tankers per day for 30 years. It's nothing. Desalinating 1.25m tons is also trivial, and not even that costly. A 10m gallon / day plant cost less than 100M and sort filter that in a month. Which is peanuts versus aggregate clean up cost, and even potential lost fishing revenue. Cost isn't driving this decision to release, politics is. And it's not regional geopolitics because JP isn't releasing this water out of spite for her neighbours. Let's not forget, it's not PRC but most of region as well as countries across the Pacific not pleased with this decision.
Which ultimately circles back to point 4, and my broader point. LOCALs don't like it. LOCALs vote. Can't risk LOCAL votes even if they're irrational, and EVEN worse if their rational distrust of TEPCO becomes reality down the line. IIRC even more containated water already leeched into ground water. Risk of future leaks, however "safe" this water is, and heads will roll. So the politically expedient solution is to dump into ocean and remove any potential risk. The political math is simple, they would never even consider local disposal or long term local storage due to the risks, so into the ocean it goes. Which again, is fine. Fine in the sense that it's a calculated decision. But let's just acknowledge that's whats actually driving decision making. Less science and more domestic JP politics. They didn't have to dump this water. A 5T economy can afford to store it indefintely and ignore geopolitical shit show. But domestic JP politics want that water gone from JP territory, so into the ocean it goes.
> That water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organization drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre, according to Tepco. A becquerel is a measure of radioactivity.
> Monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has backed the plan, will be on-site for the discharge, and samples of water and fish will be taken.
Umm, what's the controversy here?