Japan has obtained the go-ahead from the International Atomic Energy Agency for the plan to discharge water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea, which the UN agency has defined as “in line with international safety standards” . In the report presented today, during the visit to Japan by the director general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, the agency underlined that “discharges of treated water would have a negligible radiological impact on the population and the environment”. The task force of experts from eleven countries that has been working on the issue for almost two years – following the decision taken by the Japanese government in April 2021 to dump the plant’s radioactive waters into the ocean – made five missions to Japan, several visits to the plant, and published six technical reports, analyzing “hundreds of pages of technical and regulatory documentation”, underlines the IAEA. The technicians met both government members and executives of the Tepco group (Tokyo Electric Power Company), operator of the plant hit by the triple catastrophe of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in March 2011.
The IAEA promises transparency and that it will continue its safety review of the wastewater stage to “ensure that relevant international safety standards continue to be applied in the decades-long process set forth by the government of Japan and Tepco,” Grossi commented. saying that “our task is only beginning”. Further reassurances came from the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida: in the meeting with Grossi, the prime minister said that “he will not allow emissions to have a negative impact on the health of the population and on the environment in Japan and in the world“, assuring that Japan “will respond sincerely to the contents of the report” by the IAEA.
Tokyo’s guarantees, however, are not enough for Beijing: China has responded angrily to the conclusions of the UN agency. The question of the discharge of water from the Fukushima plant into the sea is a strong point of Chinese diplomacy which immediately sided against Tokyo’s decision and has been waging a battle on this front for years. Beijing urges Japan not to discharge water into the sea, and to ensure that disposal is “scientific, safe and transparent”. That of the IAEA, reads a note from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, is “a hasty report” and the conclusions of the experts of the UN agency “are relatively limited and unilateral”. The hardest thrust is for the Japanese government, accused of wanting to use the sea as a sewer. “For considerations of economic cost”, underlines the note from Beijing’s diplomats, “Japan ignored the concerns and opposition of the international community and insisted on discharging nuclear-contaminated water into the sea, using the Pacific Ocean as a a sewer”. Strong criticism of the UN agency’s go-ahead also comes from the South Korean bishops who ask for “alternative ways” to discharge into the sea: the Commission for the Ecological Environment and the Commission for Justice and Peace within the Catholic episcopal conference of the South Korea have defined the discharge of radioactive water into the sea “a threat to the ecosystem of our common home, the Earth”. The green light from the IAEA also caused discussion in Seoul’s political circles: the opposition Democratic Party defined the report presented today as “empty”, accusing the IAEA of not having independently verified the safety of Fukushima’s water, while for the Ppp (People Power Party) of President Yoon Suk-yeol, who in recent months has become the protagonist of a diplomatic thaw with Tokyo, a “rational analysis” is needed and we can speak of a “new phase” in the question of water from the plant.