Contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant could reach Taiwanese waters within one-and-a-half years of being released into the ocean, a marine environmental researcher said yesterday.
Japan on Tuesday said it would in two years begin discharging water that has been used to cool fuel rods and nuclear waste at the plant.
Japan said the wastewater would go through a powerful filtration system that can remove all radioactive material except tritium, which it said is harmless to humans in small doses.
However, the decision has drawn condemnation from neighboring countries and environmentalists.
National Taiwan Ocean University Department of Marine Environmental Informatics professor Ho Tsung-ju (何宗儒) and doctoral student Lu Ching-yuan (盧靖元) used satellite data to create a model of the wastewater’s movement along ocean currents starting from the plant’s location at 37.4 degrees north latitude.
The wastewater would follow the Kuroshio Current to reach waters near Taiwan’s east coast in one-and-a-half years, and would start affecting the marine ecosystem near the west coast of North America within four years, Tsung said, adding that the entire northern half of the Pacific Ocean would be affected within seven years.
The team used data on water depth and climate, among other factors, to forecast the spread of the wastewater, he said.
A separate model by the National Academy of Marine Research found that if the water was released just south of the plant at 36.3 degrees north latitude, it would reach Taiwan in just one year, and its effects would be greater, he said.
Conversely, if the water was discharged north of the plant at 38.2 degrees north latitude, it would take significantly longer to reach Taiwan — potentially up to seven years — and its effects would be lessened, he said.
Northern Coast Anti-Nuclear Action Alliance chief executive Kuo Ching-lin (郭慶霖) said the alliance has signed and promoted an international petition calling on the Japanese government to refrain from dumping the wastewater into the ocean.
“In the future are we going to see a recurrence of deformed fish?” he said, referring to deformed crescent grunters found near the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) in 1993, caused by wastewater from the plant.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift