Micronesia's president blasts Japan's decision to dump Fukushima water

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Micronesia's president blasts Japan's decision to dump Fukushima water

The president of the Pacific island of Micronesia vehemently denounced Japan's decision to discharge nuclear-contaminated water from its Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station into the Pacific Ocean at the United Nations last week. If anyone still believes this option is a viable option, his words should disabuse them of it.

David Panuelo spoke to the UN General Assembly in New York, saying Micronesia had the gravest concern about Japan's decision to release the so-called Advanced Liquid Processing System water into the ocean. He said on Thursday that we can't close our eyes to the unimaginable threats of nuclear contamination, marine pollution, and eventual destruction of the Blue Pacific Continent. The impacts of this decision are transboundary and intergenerational in nature. I cannot allow for the destruction of our ocean resources that support the livelihood of our people. Japan insists that the release of water used to cool the melted nuclear fuel rods at the three destroyed reactors in Fukushima is safe, as it has been processed to remove almost all radioactive elements and thus these are greatly reduced.

That is not true. There is increasing evidence that the ALPS has failed to eliminate many radioactive elements, including iodine, ruthenium, rhodium, cobalt and strontium. In late September 2017, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the nuclear plant, admitted that around 80 percent of the water stored in tanks at the Fukushima site still contains radioactive substances above legal levels. The water had a value of more than 1.3 million metric tons by July, and is still being added to at a rate of about 300 tons a day.

TEPCO and Japanese government officials also say that tritium, which can't be removed from the water, is not harmful as it already exists in the sea. But what Tokyo doesn't say is that the concentration of tritium in the water in the holding tanks is about a million times more than in the open sea. The long-term impact of exposure to large amounts of radioactive water is not known, according to scientists.

Dumping hazardous, nuclear-contaminated water is illegal under international law, but is also unethical, as this is not the only option Tokyo has at its disposal to deal with the waste. For example, the Japanese government can still buy more land and keep building more holding tanks to allow radioactive decay take place and buy more time for scientists to find better ways to deal with the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

Tokyo should not proceed with its plan to dump the contaminated water into the ocean, because the cost it is asking the world to pay is too high.