Fukushima water disposal is leadership opportunity for Japan

China’s response to Japan’s release of wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant confounds me.

I understand the logic: Put Japan on the defensive and try to rally regional discontent behind Beijing. That tactic won’t work, however. Tokyo won’t change course and failure to move Japan will make the Chinese government look petulant and weak.

Moreover, it provides Japan an opening to promote transparency and leadership on an issue — radiation monitoring — that affects the entire region. This effort could make China look even worse.

The Fukushima wastewater disposal plan has been long discussed in the media, so I’ll just outline it here. Japan has accumulated over a million tons of wastewater from daily efforts to cool debris created by the 2011 meltdown at that nuclear facility (and from rain). The roughly 1,000 storage tanks that hold the water are almost full and purging has to begin by next year; more tanks can’t be installed as they would interfere with the plant’s decommissioning.

The plant operator devised a plan to decontaminate the water that is well within national and global health standards and then release it about 1 km offshore from the crippled facility. The treatment will purify radioactive materials other than tritium and reduce the tritium concentration to 1,500 becquerels (Bq) per liter, 1/40th regulatory standards (60,000 Bq per liter) and 1/7th World Health Organization standards for drinking water (10,000 Bq per liter). The plan was assessed and approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency and other third parties.

Typical of the scientific consensus is a comment by Tony Irwin, an Australian nuclear scientist, who said that “The Fukushima water discharge will contain only harmless tritium and is not a unique event. Nuclear power plants worldwide have routinely discharged water containing tritium for over 60 years without harm to people or the environment, most at higher levels than the 22 trillion Bq per year planned for Fukushima.”

The release began late last month and tests by Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant operator, and the Japanese government show no abnormalities. Tepco said no radioactive tritium was detected in any of the samples, which means that it must have been less than 10 Bq per liter, far below the official limit. It will test samples every day and suspend the discharge immediately if tritium exceeds 700 Bq per liter. The IAEA has said that it too will test the water and will make those results available to the public.

That doesn’t matter to China. It condemned the plan to release wastewater when it was announced, calling it an “extremely selfish and irresponsible act that disregards the international public interest” and has reportedly turned down opportunities to discuss the plan with Japanese scientists.

When that didn’t change Japanese thinking, Beijing banned all imports of Japanese seafood products and reportedly told local food companies that they are not to process, sell or use Japanese seafood. This is to protect Chinese consumers and “prevent the risk of radioactive contamination of food.”

It also positions China as the protector of the international commons. Beijing no doubt hopes that communities suspicious of Japanese behavior — for reasons related to nuclear policy but not only — some of which are in Japan but are more likely to be found elsewhere (hint, hint: South Korea) will back its demands. The Pacific Islands Forum, for example, has called the plan “another major nuclear contamination disaster.” Given the Japanese nuclear industry’s history of deceit — exposed in the aftermath of the 2011 triple catastrophe — China’s approach makes sense.

It’s also economic coercion. China, with Hong Kong, constitutes the biggest single market for Japanese seafood exporters, with the value of Japanese marine products exported to the country reaching ¥162.6 billion last year, 42% of total sales overseas.

Japan isn’t going to buckle, however. The disposal policy is based on international scientific consensus, which helps overcome trust issues that taint its nuclear industry and it is rallying international support behind its plan. The government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has announced that it will create funds to help seafood exporters weather this storm, with monies being made available to ease the pain of boycotts and to restructure exports to reduce reliance on the Chinese market.

It has considerable support from foreign governments, including that of South Korea. Officially, the government of President Yoon Suk-yeol “neither supports nor endorses the release of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean,” but it has accepted the decision to do so. Yoon’s government reported that it had no technical or scientific problems with the proposal. Last week, seafood was on the lunch menu every day at the Presidential Office to encourage eating that food with “confidence.” In fact, only seven countries or regions still have restrictions on the import of Japanese food products.

Why then the hard line? If China is, as some assert, ginning up anger against Japan to distract citizens from domestic economic problems, then the inability to get Tokyo to change policy makes Beijing look weak. Where will that anger and energy go?

Worse, if the Chinese public becomes sensitive to radioactive contamination in the food chain then it might learn of — and become alarmed by — reports that China’s own nuclear plants released more radioactive tritium into the ocean than will Japan. In at least one case it was 10 times more.

Therein lies a big opportunity for Japan. It could address this problem head-on and lead the call for regional monitoring of nuclear discharges. It could help set up a mechanism like a website that provides information to the public in real time about water near nuclear power plants across the region. Much of that information is already available to governments and plant operators and often to the public with some delay. Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority provides reports on daily radiation levels in all of the nations prefectures, as well as regular readings from the waters off Fukushima.

Something similary has already been done. Over 20 years ago, the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), a track-two security mechanism, working with the Sandia National Laboratory's Cooperative Monitoring Center developed an Asia-Pacific nuclear energy transparency website that contained facts, figures and, in some cases, radiation-monitoring data relating to regional nuclear energy production.

The project grew out of Tepco’s decision to make public in near real-time airborne radiation readings on a website; Tepco invited CSCAP to link to its data pages to make this information available to a broader audience. Japan’s other nuclear power providers signed up, as did facilities and authorities in South Korea, China, Taiwan and even one in Russia. This led to the creation of a “one-stop shop” for materials on regional nuclear power production and associated issues.

As secretariat for the U.S. member committee of CSCAP, Pacific Forum (my old organization) established the Nuclear Energy Experts Group that helped put the site together and forge a community of scientists and nuclear policy experts to address problems of regional concern.

We met twice a year at nuclear facilities across the Asia-Pacific, including the Rokkasho reprocessing plant, where participants could pore over sites, ask questions and build confidence. Chinese participants were wide-eyed at the access they got at Rokkasho, then still under construction. Especially valuable was bringing the next generation into those meetings, where they could acquire knowledge and build connections that would be needed in times of crisis.

The website was popular with local communities that could check on neighboring facilities to make sure all operations were safe and secure. Views would spike when there was an earthquake or a disturbing news report — as they should.

Japan should revisit that experience. The original website has disappeared. It shouldn’t be too hard to revive. Adding a water monitor requires just a few links and some code — and a lot of diplomatic massaging and trust.