Effluents from Chinese power plants unlike radioactive water Tokyo planning to discharge into sea, Beijing says

This photo shows the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Futabacho, Futabagun of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan March 6, 2023. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

China has rebutted misleading claims by the Japanese government that Chinese nuclear power plants have been releasing effluent containing higher levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope, than the nuclear-contaminated wastewater Japan plans to discharge into the ocean.

The rebuttal from China’s National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) came on July 4 in response to a report in The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest-circulation newspaper, which quoted a document from the Japanese government. The newspaper reported late last month that tritium levels in wastewater released annually from nuclear power plants in China were higher than the amount scheduled to be released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

“In fact, there are essential differences between the nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan and the normal liquid effluents from nuclear power plants worldwide,” the NNSA said in a statement. 

The nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima plant originated from water used to cool down the nuclear reactor core after the accident, as well as groundwater and rainwater that infiltrated the reactor. It is very difficult to treat such wastewater as it contains various types of radioactive isotopes that exist in the reactor core.

Wastewater generated during normal operations at nuclear power plants only contains a few fission nuclides. If these are treated with the best available techniques that strictly comply with internationally accepted standards and are then discharged in an organized manner, they will contain far less nuclear pollutants than what is permissible, the NNSA said.

Hit by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, the Fukushima plant experienced meltdowns in three of its reactors. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), which operates the plant, plans to start discharging treated nuclear wastewater from the site as early as this summer. The move has met with strong opposition from Japan’s neighboring nations.

The NNSA statement also noted some problems with Japan’s monitoring arrangements. Japan, for example, takes samples that are a mixture of contaminated water from 10 tanks for monitoring. It is possible that some of the high-concentration nuclear-contaminated water is diluted in the process and thus reaches the discharge standard, it said.

Deng Ge, secretary-general of China Atomic Energy Authority, said the safety report of the International Atomic Energy Agency failed to fully reflect the opinions of all experts that were involved in the review and its conclusions were limited and biased.

By deliberately limiting the authorization of the IAEA technical working group, Japan restricted the review and assessment to only one treatment option.

“Even if the IAEA believes that discharging the nuclear wastewater into the sea complies with international safety standards, it does not prove that discharge is the only or best treatment option,” he stressed.

He said Japan has also failed to prove the long-term effectiveness and reliability of its purification system for the wastewater to be released, the authenticity and accuracy of its data. Nor can it prove the discharge is harmless to the marine environment and people’s health.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings has repeatedly concealed and tampered with data about the wastewater, Deng said. The IAEA conducted the review and assessment based solely on data and information provided by Japan, and only conducted laboratory inter-comparison analysis on a small amount of wastewater samples that were collected by Japan unilaterally.

Japanese fishing industries and other communities have reaffirmed their rejection to the discharge plan.

Contact the writers at houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn