World's top five concerns over Fukushima water release

The world is haunted by Japan's decision to dump treated radioactive water into the ocean.

A catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in 2011 caused one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.

Massive leakage of radioactive materials from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant contaminated the ground and rainwater, while more water was pumped into the reactors to cool cores in addition to the existing coolants, which, together, created large amounts of radioactive wastewater.

More than 100 tons of radioactive wastewater was reported to be generated every day, which overwhelmed Fukushima in 2019 when the Japanese government warned that space was running out and initiated the plan to release the wastewater into the ocean.

After years of controversy, and despite raging objections, Japan began discharging the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean from Thursday.

It's reported that, to date, around 1.34 million tons of wastewater has been accumulated. Public fears have swept across the globe, especially in Japan's neighboring countries. Here, we discuss five of the most common concerns.

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Q: What's in radioactive wastewater?

It's widely believed that the treated wastewater contains 64 radioactive substances, 70 percent of which have excessive concentration levels.

The operator of the Fukushima plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), has claimed that the wastewater has been continually treated to remove these dangerous substances.

But the problem is that some of most hazardous isotopes are likely to remain in the wastewater, such as carbon-14 with a half-life of 5,730 years, strontium-90 with a half-life of 28.8 years and cesium-137 with a half-life of 30 years.

Besides, it is nearly impossible to remove tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that's part of the water.

With a half-life of 12.3 years, it could be absorbed by seaweed, then eaten by fish, and finally end up in our stomachs, leading to chronic radiation sickness and higher risks of contracting cancers.

Q: When will the wastewater reach China?

With a strong ocean current, it will take just 57 days for the radioactive materials released into the ocean with the Fukushima wastewater to spread to most areas of the Pacific region, three years to reach the United States and Canada and 10 years to all the other oceans.

It would take 240 days to reach China's coast, and 1,200 days to make the coastlines in North America and cover almost the whole northern Pacific Ocean, according to a 2021 research by the Institute for Ocean Enginnering of the Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School.

Q: Why did Japan insist on choosing to dump the wastewater?

Actually, Japan had considered five options for dealing with the wastewater: vapor release, electrolytic release, solidification and landfill, injection into rock strata far below the surface, and discharge into the sea.

But the Japanese government picked up the last choice because it's believed to come at a lowest possible cost, estimated at just about 100 million yuan (US$13.7 million) to 200 million yuan. It would have cost tens of, or even hundreds of times, of the cost to solidify and bury it deep underground.

Q: Is seafood safe to eat?

China has implemented stricter standards to investigate imported food from Japan since the Fukushima accident took place. And since 2012, these have been included in routine food safety inspection to detect radioactive substances in food.

According to China Central TV, the wastewater will have a limited impact on the country's inshore fishing because it could flow with the Kuroshio, or Japanese Current, to the northwest, arriving in Canada first and then the US West Coast. It would take a long time for the wastewater to arrive in China's East Sea.

But for distant-water fishing, it still has great risks.

Q: Are Japanese cosmetics safe to use?

Last year, China was the second largest importer of Japanese cosmetics.

The wastewater discharge may pose risks to ingredients from oceans, such as seaweed and fish collagen. But China has rules to detect radioactive substances in imported products to prevent any harmful goods entering the country.