As Japan started releasing treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant on Thursday, scientists are calling on the public to take advice from experts in health and radiological protection in order to dispel myths and allay overblown fears of contamination.
Some experts are even suggesting a multinational monitoring mechanism under which scientists from countries possibly affected by the discharge participate in water and seafood monitoring inside Japan to build trust.
International nuclear researchers said while the discharge into the Pacific Ocean poses limited health impacts, Korean scientists could monitor radioactivity in water and seafood to ensure their safety for the local population.
In Korea, the government has said it saw no scientific or technical problems with the planned discharge of the contaminated water. But Seoul will demand an immediate halt of the release if the concentration of radioactive material in the water exceeds standard levels. The administration will also be ready to file an international lawsuit if Japan’s release deviates from the original plan.
Locally, public concern remains high with protests against the plan to release over decades more than 1 million metric tons of treated radioactive water, enough to fill 500 Olympic-size swimming pools. Surveys have shown that a majority of people are worried about seafood and ocean contamination.
Korean environmental activists hold fish dolls with radioactive signs during a rally against the Japanese government’s plan to release into the Pacific Ocean wastewater from the disabled Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant, at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, Thursday. AFP
“People should not be worried about consuming seafood, sea salt, or swimming in the ocean,” Jim Smith, a professor of environmental science at the University of Portsmouth in Britain, said.
“The treated wastewater release at Fukushima is similar to routine releases of treated wastewater from other nuclear sites around the world,” said Smith, who studies the long-term environmental consequences of the Chornobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents.
“Less radioactive tritium (a form of hydrogen) will be discharged from Fukushima than from many other nuclear sites around the world, including in South Korea,” he said.
He said the local scientific community could provide evidence by measuring radioactivity in water and seafood samples.
“The Japanese authorities and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) plan to do this and openly publish their results, but it would help people in South Korea if their own scientists also monitored the release to give more confidence in the results,” he said.
After the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant’s cooling systems and caused three reactors to melt, water was pumped in to cool the melted fuel and fuel debris at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
The contaminated water then went through a filtration system called Advanced Liquid Processing System which removes most of the radioactivity before being stored, according to the IAEA.
But the system is not able to remove carbon-14, a radioactive form of carbon, and tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen that is naturally occurring and a by-product of nuclear power plant operation.
Storage tanks hold contaminated water at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima prefecture, Japan, in this Feb. 21, 2021 photo. AFP-Yonhap
In early July, the IAEA, the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, approved Japan’s plan, saying the controlled, gradual discharges of treated water “would have a negligible radiological impact to people and the environment” in a safety review report.
Tilman Ruff, an infectious diseases and public health physician and associate professor at the University of Melbourne, said radiation doses to people from the Fukushima radioactive wastewater will be low, far below the high doses associated with short-term health impacts.
“The risk is not sufficiently high to warrant stopping swimming in the sea or eating products from the sea,” said the co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a medical organization dedicated to global nuclear weapons abolition.
However, “the dumping might reasonably influence people’s choice of which products to consume,” he said, adding that people should limit unnecessary radiation exposure.
“We know that there is no dose of radiation below which no biological harm results, so all unnecessary and avoidable exposures should be minimized. Even small doses of radiation incrementally increase the risk of cancer, chronic disease, especially heart attacks and strokes, and these risks persist for the life of the exposed person,” he said.
Ruff suggested that citizens in Korea and the Pacific region should urge Tokyo to manage the wastewater in safer ways, such as purification, long-term storage and using the water to make concrete, instead of releasing it into the ocean.
He also said environmental and health agencies in countries around the Pacific receiving ocean currents from the east coast of Japan should regularly test seafood imported from that area and closely monitor the content of the discharged water.
“This water has been in direct contact with damaged and disrupted nuclear fuel and so contains many different isotopes, many much more concerning than tritium,” he said. “Planned dilution of the discharged water will not diminish the total amount of radioactive material discharged.”
“The main problem with the dumping is that hundreds of millions of people will be exposed to additional radiation over many decades, and that these transboundary and trans-generational exposures could readily be avoided,” he said.
Adrian Bull, chair of nuclear energy and society at The University of Manchester, said the levels of tritium in the water to be discharged are several times lower than the World Health Organization guideline, making the water safe for drinking as it emerges from the plant.
According to Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant’s operator, the treated water contains around 190 becquerels (unit of radioactivity) of tritium per liter, below the WHO drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per liter.
Bull added that “there is no evidence that tritium builds up in plants, animals, including humans, so these very low trace levels can’t cause any impact ― even over many years.
“The massive dilution effect of the Pacific Ocean simply reduces the concentration of anything in the water straight away, and means that any impact on the waters around Korea will be totally undetectable.”
He said public health agencies in Korea and other countries could test levels of radioactivity, especially tritium, in seawater around Korean shores, on top of the monitoring done by the IAEA.
“This is not because I expect any increased levels of radioactivity to be detectable ― but simply to provide hard data to confirm the lack of any effects,” he said.
Recognizing the significant worry among the public, he recommended that “Korean citizens take their advice from experts in radiological protection and public health, and not from anti-nuclear pressure groups.”
David Krofcheck, a senior physics lecturer at The University of Auckland in New Zealand who studies environmental radiation, said the wastewater release will not bring “detrimental health impacts.”
He said the cancer-causing nuclear fission nuclei, namely cesium-137, strontium-90, and iodine-129 and iodine-131, produced in nuclear fission reactors, were removed to levels below the World Health Organization safety limits, in a quarter of the water that had been filtered.
“I do not foresee any long-lasting environmental or health impacts, particularly if the remaining 75 percent of the wastewater is filtered to the same extent as the initial 25 percent scheduled for slow release.”
In Hong Kong, a demonstrator tears off a cardboard with an image of a radioactive barrel during a protest after Japan’s announcement to release treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, Thursday. Reuters-Yonhap
He said he would like to see scientists from China, Korea and Taiwan be involved in water and seafood radiation testing inside Japan. “This would go a long way towards building trust among all parties in the North Pacific,” Krofcheck said.
“Korea should not worry about tritium deposited into the ocean, as the ocean is a natural sink for tritium on earth. Tritium is part of the normal background radiation to which we are exposed in living our lives.”
Nigel Marks, an associate professor of physics at Curtin University in Australia who studies nuclear materials, echoed that proper treatment of the water means it will not impact people and marine life near the Fukushima plant, nor further away in the waters of Korea.
“I have deep compassion for members of the public who feel scared. But the scientific truth is there is nothing to worry about,” he said.
He said studies in Korea have shown that the Fukushima tritium cannot be measured in Korean waters “as it is so utterly miniscule” in the ocean which already contains tritium.
“From a practical level nothing needs to be done for Korean water, or seafood or salt originating in Korea. Any measurements would entirely be for show, as a means for gaining public confidence,” he said.
He said seafood from the Fukushima region has been safe to eat once the accident stabilized and will remain safe after the water release with regular monitoring to be continued.
He also suggested the public turn to experts for advice. “It is the job of scientists to interpret data as it stands, and on this issue, it is abundantly clear that releasing the water is both safe and reasonable.”
