The Japanese government has said that in several years, the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is to begin releasing wastewater containing traces of the radioactive hydrogen isotope tritium into the ocean.
Opponents of the plan are concerned that this would pollute the ocean.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has said that the radioactive water would first have been run through a complex chain of filters that would remove 62 types of radionuclide, but not tritium.
Prior to its release, the radioactive water would be diluted to bring the concentration level to one-40th of the Japanese national standard and one-seventh of the WHO standard for drinking water.
These assurances have not prevented neighboring nations from expressing their concerns and objections.
The Great Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, inflicted serious damage on the power plant and cold water is still being pumped into the reactors to cool them down.
That water is treated, and a portion is recycled and used to continue cooling the reactor, while the rest is kept in more than 1,000 huge storage tanks on the site.
As the volume of wastewater increases and fills the tanks, it is increasingly difficult to find the space for new tanks. Japan needed to come up with a solution.
No one solution to the problem of the radioactive wastewater will satisfy everyone. Tokyo has had to choose between releasing the water into the atmosphere, pumping it into the soil or releasing it into the ocean.
It is a difficult decision to make.
In addition to censuring Japan over this situation, Taiwanese must reflect on the safety of their own nuclear power plants.
The narrative surrounding nuclear safety says that the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident could not happen in Taiwan.
However, the world said that it had learned its lesson after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, and that such an accident would never be allowed to happen again.
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 was followed by similar assurances of lessons learned and promises of an accident-free future.
Then, the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident happened.
Nuclear power remains very risky. Obstinate assurances that nuclear power is no reason for concern intentionally ignore that an unexpected natural disaster can lead to inconceivable consequences.
Questioning Japan’s decision to release radioactive wastewater into the ocean, while simultaneously supporting the restart of construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, requires an imaginative leap of logic.
People who think that disastrous consequences could not result from an unfortunate event happening at an operating Fourth Nuclear Power Plant are simply trying to have their cake and eat it.
Advocates of nuclear power saying that Taiwan has progressed and that such an accident could no longer happen does not mean that a different type of natural disaster would not jeopardize the safety of the plant.
Saying that the issue of whether Taiwan should use nuclear power needs to be debated scientifically is fine, but then the issue of Fukushima Dai-ichi’s wastewater must be debated in the same spirit. At the same time, we need to face the fact that nuclear power necessarily comes with risks.
Wang Chih-chien is a distinguished professor in National Taipei University’s Graduate Institute of Information Management.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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