TOKYO, April 28 (Xinhua) -- The Japanese government's hasty decision to discharge the contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant was not only a breach of its commitment, but would also be doomed to fail, a Japanese expert has said.
Kenichi Oshima, chairman of Japan's Citizens' Commission on Nuclear Energy, strongly opposed the Japanese government's move in recent local media reports.
Oshima pointed out that the decision was completely unconvincing that only the Japanese government and the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as TEPCO, deemed it "unproblematic" to discharge the contaminated water.
The expert said the water contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear accident is completely different from the cooling wastewater of normal nuclear power plants.
As the water directly flowed through the melt core, and in addition to tritium, there are various radioactive substances such as cesium 134, cesium 137, strontium 90 and iodine 129, and 70 percent of them exceeded the standard, so it must not be directly discharged into the sea, Oshima said.
According to the Japanese government and TEPCO, the so-called Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) would reduce all radioactive materials except tritium to below safe levels, and the remaining step would be diluting the tritium.
However, in August and September 2018, it was found that the nuclear contaminated water treated by ALPS still contained excessive levels of strontium 90 and other radioactive substances, Oshima said.
Oshima said the ALPS used by TEPCO has not yet been certified by Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority. The treatment effect of ALPS is not clear, and the direct dilution of nuclear contaminated wastewater after ALPS treatment into the sea will cause unpredictable consequences.
In addition, the government and TEPCO have not seriously discussed the use of large storage tanks for the disposal of radioactive waste water and other alternatives, Oshima said.
The Japanese government's written promise to its fishing industry practitioners not to discharge the wastewater without their consent was just a scrap of paper, simply informing them that "the decision has been made, please understand," the expert said.
Oshima said such a hardline approach is undemocratic and would not be understood by the people. Enditem
