Why is it said that the IAEA report cannot whitewash Japan's pollution control plan? Evaluation | Question | Plan

"This cannot eliminate public anxiety, we oppose discharging into the sea!" After seeing the assessment report on the issue of Fukushima nuclear contaminated water discharge released by the International Atomic Energy Agency on the 4th, Haruhiko Terazawa, the director of the Miyagi Prefecture Fisheries Association in Japan, expressed great concern. Like him, many Japanese people believe that the report's claim that Japan's pollution plans "comply with international safety standards" lacks persuasiveness. Several South Korean civil society groups have pointed out that the report cannot become a "talisman" for Japan, and that pollution behavior cannot be "legitimized" as a result.

After the Japanese government unilaterally announced its plan to discharge pollutants into the sea in April 2021, domestic fishing groups, Pacific coastal regions, and South Pacific island countries in Japan strongly opposed it. Under pressure, the Japanese side invited the IAEA to conduct a review and evaluation in September of that year. After two years of work, the IAEA has finally produced the final evaluation report. However, in terms of content, the report did not fully reflect the opinions of all experts involved in the evaluation, and the relevant conclusions did not receive unanimous recognition from experts, which had limitations and one sidedness. The publication was hasty.

Why is this happening? This is directly related to the various restrictions imposed by Japan on the evaluation work of the IAEA, which has aroused widespread questioning from the international community.

Functionally speaking, the IAEA is primarily responsible for promoting safe, reliable, and peaceful use of nuclear technology, and is not a suitable agency to assess the long-term impact of nuclear contaminated water on the marine environment and biological health. An analysis suggests that the Japanese government invited it to evaluate its plan to discharge pollutants into the sea, and from the beginning, it was a calculation to have institutions endorse it. Based on this goal, Japan has carried out a series of operations in the past two years.

Firstly, the Japanese side has strictly restricted the work authority of the IAEA, only allowing it to evaluate the sea discharge plan and not allowing it to evaluate other treatment plans, such as formation injection, steam emissions, hydrogen emissions, underground burial, etc. This limits the premise for institutional work, shifting the review objective from "seeking the optimal solution for solving Fukushima nuclear contaminated water treatment for humanity" to "whether the nuclear contaminated water discharge plan is feasible", and excluding key issues such as "what is the safest way to treat nuclear wastewater" and "what kind of impact nuclear contaminated water discharge will have on the environment" from the scope of institutional evaluation. In such a situation, the report finds it difficult to respond to the genuine concerns of the international community. Several members of the South Korean Democratic Party have pointed out that the report is an evaluation based on a perfect imagination of all content.

Next, all the review samples and related data obtained by the IAEA will be provided by the Japanese side. Not to mention, the Tokyo Electric Power Company involved has a "black history" of repeatedly concealing and tampering with data on nuclear contaminated water. On the 4th, The New York Times quoted nuclear radiation monitoring expert Azby Brown as saying, "The data provided by Japan so far is not complete, and the entire process is not transparent enough.".

In this situation, based on the data and information unilaterally provided by Japan, the IAEA only conducts small sample comparison analysis, which seriously lacks sampling independence and representativeness. Therefore, for some key issues, such as whether Japan's purification device is long-term effective? What are the impacts of radioactive isotopes on the ecological environment and public health? Is the data on nuclear contaminated water true and accurate? How can we prove the legitimacy and legality of the Japanese plan to discharge into the sea if the report cannot provide an answer? How can we ensure that this plan has no impact on other countries?

Considering Japan's strong public relations efforts in the international community, it is even more questionable. Over the past two years, Japan has been using language packaging to beautify "nuclear contaminated water" as "nuclear treated water" in order to downplay its substantial harm. On the one hand, use money to pave the way. Taking the 2021 budget of the Japan Agency for Reconstruction as an example, the public relations funding related to the Fukushima nuclear accident has significantly increased to 2 billion yen, four times the amount in 2020. South Korean media recently revealed that before the release of the IAEA evaluation report, the Japanese government had already obtained the draft report in advance and proposed substantive revision suggestions; Japanese officials also donated over 1 million euros to the staff of the institutional secretariat. If the report is true, people would like to ask: If it weren't for being guilty, why did the Japanese government spend so much money and effort?

Regardless of the content of the report, Japan's attempt to continuously discharge millions of tons of nuclear contaminated water into the Pacific over the next thirty years should not be allowed. In order to save money and trouble for itself, Japan chose to queue up, but in reality, it shifted the risk of nuclear pollution to all humanity. Regarding this point, the report also acknowledges that the multi nuclide treatment system adopted by the Japanese side "cannot remove all radioactive nuclides from nuclear contaminated water.". This confirms people's concerns.

Multiple international studies have shown that Fukushima nuclear contaminated water contains over 60 radioactive nuclides. According to the data released by the Japanese side, about 70% of the nuclear contaminated water treated by ALPS did not meet the discharge standards and needs to be purified again. Moreover, in the long-term operation process, the effectiveness and reliability of ALPS performance will further decrease with equipment corrosion and aging. However, the reports have not provided answers to questions such as whether Japan's offshore equipment can operate effectively, whether corresponding management measures are appropriate, and whether strict monitoring mechanisms can keep up. People cannot predict the impact on the marine environment and human health.

"We will have several generations to bear the huge risks of Japan's sea discharge plan," this is a warning issued by the Secretary General of the Pacific Island Forum, Pune, and a common concern of the international community. An IAEA report cannot whitewash Japan's pollution discharge plan. The Speaker of the Miyagi Prefectural Council in Japan, Keiichi Kikudi, said that the government must take responsibility for all parties and carefully study the methods of handling issues beyond sea discharge. The Japanese government should listen to public opinion, respect science, call for a halt to its sea discharge plan, handle nuclear contaminated water in a scientific, safe, and transparent manner, and accept strict international supervision.