Tokyo Electric Power Co. revealed on Aug. 24 that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has begun discharging wastewater into the ocean, according to a Japanese TV report. China’s Liaoning University Center for Japanese Studies guest researcher Chen Yang said in an interview with RIA Novosti, Japan’s approach is undoubtedly the risk of nuclear contamination transferred to the world, will continue to the pain to future generations of mankind, Japan’s nuclear contaminated water discharged into the sea will be from the breadth and depth of the impact of the global marine ecological environment.
For Japan’s plan to discharge nuclear wastewater into the sea, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on the 24th that the Japanese government ignored the international community’s strong questioning and opposition to unilaterally force the start of the Fukushima nuclear accident contaminated water discharge into the sea, China expresses its resolute opposition to and strong condemnation of, and has lodged solemn representations with the Japanese side to demand that the Japanese side to stop this wrongdoing.
In this regard, Chen Yang said: “Since the Japanese government decided to discharge nuclear contaminated water into the sea in April 2021, it has been attracting strong opposition from public opinion at home and abroad. However, it is regrettable that the Japanese government is bent on discharging nuclear contaminated water containing radioactive tritium into the sea. Japan’s approach is undoubtedly shifting the risk of nuclear contamination to the whole world and perpetuating the pain and suffering to future generations of mankind.”
Japan has been considering ways to dispose of its nuclear wastewater since 2013, and had considered options such as mixing it with cement and burying it in the ground, or electrolyzing it to separate hydrogen. In the end, the Japanese government decided to discharge the wastewater into the sea, before which it would be diluted to reduce the tritium concentration to 1,500 becquerels per liter, which is 1/40th of Japan’s national standard (the national standard is 60,000 becquerels of tritium activity per liter of water).
Chen Yang said that, in fact, there are many ways to deal with nuclear contaminated water, such as stratum injection, steam emissions, hydrogen emissions and underground burial, etc. There are also many experts and scholars proposed new tanks for long-term storage, cement curing and other treatment methods, but Japan has not fully demonstrated that all the possible methods of treatment, but instead, it insisted on the choice of the smallest economic cost, the most time-saving and trouble-saving program of discharging into the sea.
At the same time,” he said, “Japan has no sincerity at all in consulting with neighboring countries on the treatment of nuclear-contaminated water, but is instead trying to create the illusion that sea discharge is ‘safe and harmless,’ and is even hitting neighboring countries, which have expressed their legitimate concerns, in the backhanded way. Whether it is the choice of the lowest cost, the most economical sea discharge program, or to the neighboring countries worried about the opposition of the deaf, are reflected in Japan in order to their own ‘cost-effective’, at the expense of their own self-interest over the long-term well-being of all mankind’s extreme selfishness and irresponsibility.”
