Already, ocean creatures have been increasingly under intense pressure from climate change, fueled by the devastation of oceanic warming and acidification. While world experts are contemplating ways to arrest this dreadful process of oceanic deterioration, a new evil originating from the Japanese government’s plan to dispose of the radiation-polluted wastewater into the sea off Fukushima prefecture is about to set off another disastrous impact, which will take decades to redress.
In the decade following the “towering” tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and propelled a triple reactor meltdown, water has not ceased running through the wreckage. In consequence, 1.25 million metric tons of liquid, estimated to be able to fill up 500 standard swimming pools, is now confirmed to sit in storage tanks near the reactors, where the plant’s operator — the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) — earlier said there is no further space to store the wastewater. Japanese authorities announced in April 2021 that the wastewater would be released into the sea sometime this summer, after treatment to remove most nuclear elements. Japanese officials and TEPCO have repeatedly insisted that the decades-long discharge plan is safe and meets international regulatory standards for ridding nuclear power plants of wastewater. Despite such official assurances, local farming and fisheries organizations, some neighboring nations and many environmental activists have been logging staunch opposition to the release program.
Confronted with the imminent threat from the “reckless” dumping of radioactive-polluted wastewater, these concern groups strongly disagreed with the release of the waste, holding that it could, in the case of the fishing industry, lead to a repeat of the reputational damage suffered by the industry prior to its recovery from the fallout of the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011. Calling the discharge decision “extremely irresponsible” and “dangerous”, protesting groups gathered outside the TEPCO headquarters, petitioning against the dumping plan. Outside the country itself, Tokyo’s decision to release nuclear-tainted wastewater into the Pacific Ocean has sparked “wide-ranging criticism”. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Japan remarked that the harm engendered by pouring the radioactive fluid into the sea off Fukushima could be “immeasurable”, noting that nuclear-contaminated elements could extend across half the Pacific Ocean region.
In the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, experts have criticized the disposal practice as “immoral”. The chairperson of the Hong Kong Advisory Council on Food and Environmental Hygiene, Kenneth Leung Mei-yee, lamented the Japanese authorities’ unethical wastewater dumping scheme, stressing that exposure to cerium could lead to serious health conditions such as leukemia, and that it could linger in the human body for over 30 years. He added that even after the water has been properly treated, small amounts of radioactive elements may remain and be consumed by animals that could then spread the toxic substances into the food chain.
At the global level, Greenpeace International has railed against the G7’s endorsement in April of Japan’s Fukushima wastewater removal arrangement — a decision allowing politics to prevail over science, environmental protection and international law. Despite the “extreme pressure from climate change, overfishing and resource extraction” to which the marine environment is exposed, Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace East Asia, denounced the G7’s support of Japanese moves to “deliberately dump nuclear waste into the ocean”. The expert urged Japanese authorities to pause “pursuing their planned and precedent-setting release of the radioactively contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean” and to collaborate with the wider scientific community to identify other approaches that protect human and ocean life.
Currently, aquatic products from Japan account for about 6.3 percent of the territory’s total imports of related items — a share considered “not very large” and thus with “manageable” impact by the Environment and Ecology Secretary Tse Chin-wan on the overall food supply in the city. Yet, to ensure food safety and public health, the environment chief said that the SAR government will “double-check” food imports from Japan and ban risky items. Nevertheless, advice from local experts denoted that the authorities’ monitoring mechanism mounted since the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 is elaborate and stringent enough to rule out the necessity for a total ban on aquatic output from Japan, which was recommended by some legislators to tackle the scary environmental issue. In this regard, the public has noticed that in the period from March 2011 to April this year, a massive total of 770,000 food samples from Japan were examined, of which 120,000 were aquatic products which were all confirmed to be safe.
What then can be done in the SAR about the unilateral move by the Japanese government to scrap treated nuclear polluted water into the sea, regardless of the fierce objections raised by a multitude of stakeholders? There is, first and foremost, the need to step up inspection of food imports from Japan, giving priority to monitoring work on agricultural and aquatic exports from Fukushima and its adjoining prefectures. This safety-guaranteeing mechanism can be implemented along with a system of tough labeling for Japanese seafoods describing where they come from — down to the level of individual prefectures — to facilitate the precise tracing of the products’ places of origin and the imposition of immediate bans on seafood imports suspected or found to be in violation of the territory’s food safety regulations.
With Hong Kong faring significantly as the second-largest buyer of Japanese aquatic products, there is a vital need for the government to protect industry interests and enter into close communication networks with the approximately 2,000 Japanese restaurants in the city so that these operators are sufficiently informed of the authorities’ position and measures in respect of the wastewater disposal incident. For instance, the businesses involved might venture to seek alternative provision of their food materials to reduce operating risks. At the same time, they should be alert to the necessary adjustments to lengths of contracts for material supplies, down to individual transactions as might be warranted by possible drastic control measures on the part of the government to protect public safety.
Last but not least, clear and well-presented public education should be provided to keep the broader community informed about the potential hazards and the associated monitoring efforts that are involved in connection with the looming environmental disaster in question. On the government side, it is to be remembered that public health and safety should always be of paramount importance.
The author is a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
