2023-07-14 09:10:15
Shaimaa Khalil BBC Tokyo correspondent
July 14, 2023 at 9:07 am
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Fishermen in Fukushima Prefecture worry that the discharge of nuclear wastewater will extend the stigma suffered by the local fishery.
In a laboratory called “Tarachine,” an hour’s drive from the defunct Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s east coast, Ai Kimura was cutting a fish sample in a white coat and gloves.
Miss Kimura and her team of volunteers collect fish samples from the waters around the nuclear power plant four times a year. That devastating 2011 tsunami flooded the reactor, triggering a radioactive leak. They set up the lab a few months later, and they’ve been working on it ever since.
Except Ms. Kimura is not a scientist—nor are all the women in the nonprofit lab she leads. The lab’s name “Tarachine” comes from the ancient Japanese word for “mother”. Ms. Kimura said that following the tsunami, local residents who were shocked opened the laboratory in order to find out what was safe to feed their children. Because it was difficult to find information regarding radiation risks, they hired technologists to train them in detecting radioactive material and recording readings, while raising funds and starting to teach themselves.
This is the devastating decision of a community that never thought a nuclear power plant accident was a possibility. Now, 12 years later, they once more find it difficult to trust the Japanese government, which insists that it is safe to discharge treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.
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BBC reporter Shaimaa Khalil sees how the Fukushima nuclear power plant is being handled (video in English)
Earlier this month, Japan got the green light to start pumping treated wastewater. The water, which was once used to cool molten reactors, is more than a million tons — equivalent to 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Now it has accumulated more than 1,000 storage tanks, the storage is full, and the water needs to find a place to drain.
Japan’s nuclear power regulator has given the green light to Tokyo Electric Power Holdings (TEPCO), which operates the plant, to drain the water. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said a two-year review by the watchdog found the program met international standards and that the treated wastewater was “radioactive to people and the environment.” The effect can be ignored”. Some Japanese food imports are still banned, despite similar assessments from neighboring South Korea. China and Hong Kong have announced similar bans.
However, residents living in Fukushima and surrounding areas are not convinced by this statement.
image copyrightJiro Akiba/BBC
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Volunteers from Tarachine’s lab collect samples from the sea surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
“We still don’t know the extent of the treatment of the contaminated wastewater, which is why we are once morest the discharge,” Ms. Kimura said. She also said that many local families are concerned regarding the discharge of these treated wastewater.
TEPCO has been filtering the water to remove more than 60 types of radioactive substances, but the water is not completely radioactive. It would contain tritium and carbon-14, radioactive isotopes of hydrogen and carbon respectively, which cannot be easily removed from the water. But experts say they pose no danger unless ingested in large quantities because of the low levels of radiation they emit. That’s why the filtered water goes through another stage of treatment before it’s discharged – diluting it with seawater to reduce the concentration of residual substances.
The Japanese government has said that by the end of the filtration and testing process, the treated water will not be different from water released from nuclear power plants around the world.
“Invisible Enemy”
But in Fukushima, the opposite of those facts is fear. Here, radiation is called “the invisible enemy” by many people, and people often cannot forget its existence.
After the disaster, the government declared the 30 kilometers (22 miles) around the nuclear plant a no-go zone and more than 150,000 people were evacuated. Although much has changed, many neighborhoods remain completely empty, with greenery covering the roofs and windows of long-abandoned houses. Shop signs have faded, but metal fences and yellow warning tape still block the empty, narrow streets.
Even the existence of the “Tarachine” lab is a testament to the community’s fear of an invisible enemy, even if they were assured it wasn’t the case.
image copyrightJiro Akiba/BBC
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Ai Nakamura tests samples for radiation in the laboratory.
In the main laboratory, one volunteer is cutting cabbage and measuring the gamma radiation in it, while another treats water samples before testing. In the hallway, there were bags of dust samples from vacuum cleaners used by nearby homes. In the back of the room, food samples are dried before being tested for radiation. On the wall, are diagrams and maps of the nuclear power plant and the surrounding ocean, marked in various colors to indicate the level of radiation and how far it has spread.
The women collect samples and test various materials sent in by locals. “Some families bring acorns to us (for testing),” Ms. Kimura said. “In Japan, we make spinning tops out of toothpicks and acorns. The government doesn’t consider testing these. Some mothers come and ask us to test their neighborhood parks. radiation levels.”
The lab detects radioactive substances such as strontium-90, tritium, and radium-134 and 137 in various samples and tracks levels over many years.
“We upload all our findings to our website so that everyone can find them,” Ms. Kimura said. “We’ve been able to confirm that in the food we’ve tested, there’s been a gradual reduction in radioactivity. If they’re releasing wastewater, that’s ultimately reversing the status quo that the forces of nature have made possible.”
She sees the controversial plan as a huge step backwards. She said there were still “lingering emotional scars” from the 2011 disaster, and the decision was regarding uncovering those scars.
Experts say the two-year-old plan is a necessary step in a long and costly cleanup. In order for the power station to be decommissioned, the radioactive waste inside the molten reactor must be removed. And to do that, it will first have to drain the water that has been used to cool reactors at the meltdown power station since the 2011 tsunami.
image copyrightJiro Akiba/BBC
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Treated nuclear wastewater has been stored in more than 1,000 storage tanks.
In March, Akira Ono, head of TEPCOto the Associated Press, they are only now beginning to fully understand the extent of the damage inside the reactor. The most urgent task, he said, was to safely start drainage to clear the area around the power station. They also need to make room for more water, as the melted debris still needs to keep cooling.
“The real issue is not the actual physiological effects of radiation, but our fear of it,” says molecular pathologist Gerry Thomas. She has collaborated with Japanese scientists on radiation research and advised the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Science was ignored as nuclear activists began bickering with each other soon following the disaster, she said, while the government went to great lengths to show it had taken all necessary precautions to reassure a shocked and terrified population.
“Politicians want to show that they’re careful, and that they care regarding everybody. But in reality, the message people get is, well, this stuff has to be very, very dangerous.”
fear
And now, that fear — and mistrust — is becoming entrenched.
To make matters worse, it also affects livelihoods. Fishermen say releasing treated water can tarnish the reputation of what they catch and drive down prices, exacerbating an already struggling industry. They say the fishery has never fully recovered since the disaster and remains reliant on government subsidies.
Inside the plant, Tepco official Kazuo Yamanaka points to two fish tanks – one containing flounder in normal seawater and the other in water with radiation levels comparable to the wastewater that will be discharged into the ocean. The fish are closely monitored — while tritium levels in their bodies initially rise, they level off, and are then excreted when the fish return to standard seawater, he said.
“I’m a radiation expert, so I know that tritium has very little effect on the human body and living things,” he said. “We all care regarding the same thing—radiation, and that’s why we’re so anxious. It can put people at ease a little bit.”
For Takahashi, whose family has been fishermen for three generations, this is far from reassuring: “We’re once morest it, and we’ve seen the negative effects. We’ve seen contractors say they won’t buy Fukushima products.”
image copyrightJiro Akiba/BBC
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Toru Takahashi, left, said the fear had affected business
For him, this is a vital interest. While supervising dock workers unloading buckets of fish to clean and prepare them for sale to the market, he said that he would not give up the family business.
Compared to before the disaster in 2011, their business is far worse, he said: “Counting all the small fishing boats, we are now 300 million yen (a year). Before we were making regarding 700 million yen a year ( £3.9m; $5.1m).”
He fears the situation might get worse once the wastewater is discharged, as both China and South Korea have announced import bans.
Asked whether adequate scientific evidence would be enough to overcome such concerns, Mr Yamanaka acknowledged that “reputation cannot be controlled no matter how we package it”, adding: “We believe our efforts will one day settle these debates.”
“I know we’ve lost people’s trust – it will take time to regain it.”
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