The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant: “I’m sorry I didn’t do anything wrong”, says Haruo Ono

Workers in Japan have started releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. After the plant was destroyed in a 2011 earthquake, water has been accumulating ever since.

The release of the water is seen as unfair by fishermen in Japan’s northeast Tohoku region, because of its outsize contribution to the capital’s supply of labor, seafood and energy.

The fishermen auctioned off their catch in Tsurushihama, around 40 miles north of the crippled plant, as more than 1 million tons of water flowed through an underwater tunnel into the ocean.

Fukushima is known for its seafood, which fetches good prices at Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji fish market. According to Haruo Ono, the price of local fish has been at its highest level since the earthquake and the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Ono now worries that prices will tumble. He blames the Japanese government for abandoning Fukushima’s fishermen, and he and his colleagues are suing the government to stop the release of the treated radioactive water.

“Fukushima folks didn’t do anything wrong,” he comments, sitting on a pier near his fishing boat. He says that the nuclear plant was built by the government. Who uses the electricity? Tokyo!

Before announcing the water discharge, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida tried to show he had won over the country’s fishermen. The government will earmark funds to rebut disinformation about their products, and purchase seafood they can’t sell.

“We’ll continue taking necessary measures,” Kishida told fisheries fisheries representatives, “to ensure fisherfolk can continue their activities with peace of mind, and we pledge to continue doing so even if the water release takes a long time.”

Fukushima residents complain about Japan’s release of the ocean’s water into the Pacific — a question of local sovereignty and policy

The geography of the area has an impact on its dilemma. Kunpei Hayashi, an agriculture expert at Fukushima University, says that in preindustrial times, Fukushima locals would head to Tokyo to find work in winter, as there wasn’t much to do at home.

The government has made some efforts to remake Fukushima’s landscape and guard against future quakes and tsunamis. Buildings have been moved back from the shore due to the emergence of seawalls.

We were forced to think that our life can easily be changed or destroyed, it was the first time that had ever occurred to us. He says it makes us feel impermanence. Our trust and happiness has been destroyed because of our hometown.

Nakajima and thousands of others are accusing the government of responsibility for the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A local court ruled in 2020 that scientists had warned the government that a major tsunami could strike the nuclear plant, but the government took no action. But the government appealed the loss to the supreme court and won.

Locals don’t have enough information to make a decision on whether the water discharge is safe or not.

A recent Kyodo News Agency poll found that 44% of Japanese are unsure whether to support or oppose the release. Most say the government doesn’t do enough to explain it.

Source: Worries over seafood safety mount as Japan releases Fukushima water into the Pacific

The Nuclear Safety of Waterways: What is the Risk of releasing radioactive elements into water after a Chernobyl accident?

Housewife Mieko Orikasa bypasses plates of bonito and tuna in the sashimi section of Nakajima’s store. Asked whether she trusts the government’s reassurances about the safety of local seafood she replies: “I have no way to find out myself.”

I have two children, a 3-year-old child and a second grandchild due to be born in December. I have to decide if it’s wise to allow them to eat fish or not.

A review by the UN’s nuclear watchdog says that the discharge will have a negligibleradiation impact to people and the environment. Here’s what the Japanese government is doing, and why.

Tritium is a radioactive isotope they can’t filter out. Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, and hydrogen is part of the water itself (H20). So it is impossible to create a filter that could remove the tritium.

The Japanese government maintains that, especially when compared to some of the other radioactive material at the site, tritium isn’t all that bad. Its radioactive decay is relatively weak, and because it’s part of water, it actually moves through biological organisms rather quickly. And its half-life is twelve years, so unlike elements such as uranium 235, which has a half life of 700 million years, it won’t be in the environment all that long.

The plan is consistent with international safety standards and has been reviewed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA also plans to conduct independent monitoring to make sure that the discharge is done safely.

The risk is really, really low. Jim Smith is a professor at the University of Pompey and he says that it’s not a risk. He’s spent the past few decades studying radioactivity in waterways after nuclear accidents, including at Chernobyl.

If the plant release is done correctly, then the levels of radiation that people and the environment will get won’t be significant, according to Smith.

Edwin Lyman is the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. He thinks Japan’s current plan is the least bad of a bunch of bad options, out of the limited options they have.

The water is the best option according to some. Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, thinks it would have been better to keep the contaminated water on land “where it’s much easier to monitor.” It’s options could have been to mix it into concrete or immobilize it.

The water will not pose a risk across the Pacific. “We don’t expect to see widespread direct health effects, either on humans or on marine life,” he says. But he does think that non-tritium contaminates missed by the ALPS system could build up over time near the shore.

Beussler consults for the Pacific Islands Forum, a coalition of nations including the Marshall Islands and Tahiti that are also apprehensive about Japan’s decision. During the Cold War, many countries were subjected to high levels of radioactive steam as a result of atmospheric nuclear tests. “There are islands they can’t return to…because of legacy contamination,” Buesseler says.

Moreover, “they’re suffering in many ways from climate change and sea level rise more than the rest of the world,” he says. Their view is that Japan’s release into the Pacific is just one insult.

The First Release of Trade-Induced Radioactive Levels in Ocean Water: Prospects for the Decipherment of the Biologically Active Substrate

The first release of 7,800 tons of treated water is expected to last about 17 days. Both Tepco and Japan’s fisheries agency have said they will monitor the ocean water for radioactive levels, and the IAEA has said it will also oversee the process, which is expected to last decades.