Fishers fear Fukushima waters
When the earthquake struck 12 years ago, Toshimitsu Konno did not hesitate. He abandoned his home in the coastal town of Soma in Fukushima and took his wife, elderly parents and school-age children to safety inland. Then he rushed to his fishing boat and put out to sea.
As a tsunami surged towards the shore, he piloted the small vessel safely through the waves. He spent two nights at sea. watching fires burn in the devastated town before returning to shore.
Yet despite the quick thinking that saved the lives of his family, as well as his boat, Konno’s life and business have never recovered.
In other parts of the stricken coast north of Soma, fishermen like Konno long ago rebuilt their ports, bought new nets, and returned to fishing for the crab, sole, flounder and puffer fish for which the coast is famous.
Soma, however, continues to live under the shadow of a place 45km to the south – the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The tsunami, caused by an undersea earthquake on March 11, 2011, killed about 18,500 people. It also destroyed the plant’s cooling systems, leading to a meltdown in three of the reactors, which spilled radiation across land and sea. Fukushima, formerly famous for its fish, rice and sake, became a name as notorious as Chernobyl.
Now, just as their reputation is slowly recovering, fishermen like Konno face a further blow.
Officials are about to begin pumping contaminated water from the Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean. More than a million tonnes of water will be released into the sea over 30 years.
The waste water will be treated and diluted to remove most radioactive contaminants, but will still contain traces of the isotopes tritium and carbon-14.
The governments of China, South Korea and Pacific island nations have protested the
decision, but none are affected more directly than the fishermen of Fukushima.
‘‘We used to be famous,’’ says Konno, head of the fishermen’s co-operative for the waters immediately north of Fukushima Daiichi. ‘‘Our market was always open. We were known for having great live fish. We know now that prices will go down.’’
Twelve years after the catastrophe, there is no clear timeline for the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which is decades away from being safely dismantled. In the meantime, 130 tonnes of water is contaminated by it every day.
Some of this is poured directly on to the broken reactors to cool them. Much is natural groundwater that flows through the earth towards the sea, picking up radiation from the exposed reactors on the way. To prevent the groundwater reaching the plant in the first place, the authorities built an underground ice wall of frozen earth, but this has been only partly effective.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), pumps out the irradiated water, filters it, and keeps it in 1000 vast storage tanks – a total of 1.32 million tonnes so far. Tepco says they are 96% full – and that by the northern autumn, it will have no room left.
The filtering is supposed to remove all the radioactive elements except for tritium, which is routinely released into the sea in
diluted form from nuclear plants around the world. But carbon-14 and trace elements of more dangerous substances, including strontium-90 and iodine-129, have also been detected in the water.
The Japanese Government says the tritium will be diluted to less than 1/40th of the concentration allowed under Japanese safety standards, and 1/7th of the World Health Organisation’s permitted level for safe drinking water.
It is hoped that the water will quickly and harmlessly dissipate into the Pacific Ocean. Environmentalists and some scientists disagree.
The United States National Association of Marine Laboratories claims that the statistics, assumptions and models used in the Tepco projections are flawed, and that there is a danger of concentrated clusters of radiation accumulating on the ocean floor.
Shaun Burnie, a nuclear expert at Greenpeace, says the water should be stored longer in tanks, allowing time for the tritium to reduce – its half-life is 12 years – and that the decision to release it into the ocean is as much about saving money as science.
‘‘The Japanese Government’s narrative has been created for financial and political reasons,’’ Burnie says. ‘‘Not only is ocean discharge the cheapest option, it helps the government create the impression that substantial progress is being made in the early decommissioning.
‘‘The only acceptable solution is continued long-term storage and processing of the contaminated water. It is the only way to safeguard the human rights, health and environment of the people of Fukushima, the rest of Japan, and the wider international community.’’
Even if it is safe, it makes little difference to the fishermen of Soma, for whom even the perception of a danger is enough to harm their business.
Among them, opinion is divided. Some oppose the release under any circumstances. Others, including Konno, reluctantly accept it as the least bad option, given that only complete decommissioning, decades in the future, will solve the problem.
‘‘When you go to the supermarket, there is so much choice,’’ says Mie Sato, who works in the Soma market. ‘‘You can buy fish from places all over Japan. After this water is released, why would someone choose to buy fish from Fukushima?’’
‘‘After this water is released, why would someone choose to buy fish from Fukushima?’’
Mie Sato, fish market worker