Japan has announced that treated and diluted radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will be discharged into the ocean starting Thursday. heard by TSFthe president of the environmental association Zero,
Francisco Ferreira, considers that there are reasons for concern.
“Indeed, there is cause for concern from fishermen, from countries close to the Pacific Ocean and also from various United Nations rapporteurs who have raised questions about a number of impacts, in particular the biological impacts of elements present in the water that will be released since Thursday, such as the presence of tritium, carbon 14 or strontium 90, and there really was not a sufficiently complete environmental impact assessment”, explains Francisco Ferreira.
The president of Zero also mentions that “one of the big complaints is that this plan to decommission the Fukushima plant has been far from what would be desirable and what was expected.”
For Francisco Ferreira, the prohibition of some foods may be justified.
“It’s quite a difficult question to assess, precisely because we don’t know the impacts and of course I can use arguments like the precautionary principle, but when we put a large volume of water into the ocean, sooner or later we pollute it.” There is a very important logic here: dilution is not the solution to pollution and I would say that this is a position that can be justified more than not because many of the impacts that should have been studied were not, but it is actually a very extreme and conflictive”, he adds.
The release of water begins almost 12 and a half years after the March 2011 nuclear meltdown, triggered by a powerful earthquake and tsunami.
At the beginning of 2024, the Fukushima Daiichi plant should run out of space to store around 1.33 million tons of water, coming from rain, groundwater or injections necessary to cool the cores of nuclear reactors.
Both the Japanese government and TEPCO have advised that the water must be removed to prevent accidental leaks from the tanks.
Despite being approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the plan has raised concerns in neighboring countries, sparking street protests in South Korea and leading China to ban the import of some food products from Japan’s 10 provinces.
In late June, the Chinese Foreign Ministry commission in Macao criticized the Japanese plan, calling it irresponsible and in violation of international law.
The South Korean government has been conducting various tests to show people that there is no risk of environmental or food contamination from the Fukushima spills.
Source: TSF
