The crisis of treated wastewater from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in the Pacific Ocean sparked a new crisis between Japan and China, which could have been remedied by several measures contrary to what Tokyo had taken, according to an expert assessment.
On Thursday, Japan began draining the water, according to a video clip broadcast by the operating company, TEPCO, without responding to China’s warnings of its threat to environmental life. What prompted the latter to decide to stop all imports of Japanese seafood.
The water in question is the water Japan used to cool the molten cores of the Yokushima nuclear reactor, following a huge earthquake that struck Japan in 2011, causing the collapse of the nuclear plant overlooking the ocean.
At that time, Japan kept this water to start treating it and trying to remove radioactive materials from it. In preparation for its disposal, however, there are some materials that cannot be separated from it, which is tritium.
China believes that Japan is doing a “selfish” act, and that the ocean is the common property of mankind, but the latter says that the waters are safe, and it got the green light from the International Atomic Energy Agency for the plan in July.
Why worry?
“Sky News Arabia” spoke with Hatem Lashin, an expert in nuclear security, to find out which side is right in this crisis, and he said, explaining what determines whether these waters are safe or not:
There is a difference between the water produced by the normal operation of nuclear plants and the water used to cool a destroyed reactor. The water generated by the work of the stations may be non-existent with radioactive materials, and the percentage of risk from it does not exist at all, but the water that is discharged into it is measured for the degree of radiation in it every insurance period. What happened at Yokushima Station is completely different. Because it is a station whose reactor melted, and this water touched the core of the reactor to cool it and contain the volatilization of hazardous materials; So I became part of the radioactive process. The water contains elements capable of absorbing and interacting with radioactive components resulting from the melting of the reactor core. So, the discharge process may be risky, and despite the International Atomic Energy Agency’s assertion that the levels of radioactive substances in the water are minimal, the cooling process results from abnormal conditions, which is entering the molten reactor core. There are no studies or researches that have been able to give clear answers about the safety of water that has touched the core of a molten reactor. Because these researches are almost impossible because of the inability to deal with the reactor in the first place. In the Chernobyl crisis in Russia, part of the water that was used for cooling evaporated, and until this moment there are disasters as a result of this evaporation on the soil, human life and rain. It is normal for water to have a radiation level of less than 1,500 becquerels per liter, but this water may have reached radiation levels up to a thousand times that level during the cooling process.
The best solution
About the best solution that Tokyo could have resorted to in order to secure the environment from the dangers of these waters, as well as not to anger its neighbor China, Lashin says:
There are alternatives to drainage, which is the establishment of basins inside giant pits inside the sealed ground, and if Japan’s statements are correct, its soil will not be harmed, and there will also be no danger to human life and marine life. Japan could have remedied the crisis with Beijing by involving it in the process of detecting the level of water radiation, but it resorted to the International Atomic Energy Organization, which is an unreliable body for China. The first discharge into the ocean is expected to last about 17 days, and includes 7,800 cubic meters of water from the Fukushima plant.
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2023-08-26 09:44:14
