{"id":20351,"date":"2019-01-22T02:03:22","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T01:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/?p=20351"},"modified":"2023-08-29T11:19:24","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T09:19:24","slug":"technical-failures-increase-risk-of-contaminated-fukushima-water-discharge-into-pacific-greenpeace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/press-release\/20351\/technical-failures-increase-risk-of-contaminated-fukushima-water-discharge-into-pacific-greenpeace\/","title":{"rendered":"Technical failures increase risk of contaminated Fukushima water discharge into Pacific – Greenpeace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tokyo, 22 January 2019 \u2013 The nuclear water crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has been compounded by multiple technical failures and flawed decision making driven by short term cost cutting by the Japanese government and TEPCO, a new Greenpeace Germany analysis concludes. <\/span><\/p>\n

The report details how plans to discharge over 1 million tonnes of highly contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean was proposed by the same Government task force that ignored alternative options that would have avoided threatening further contamination of the ocean.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision not to develop water processing technology that could remove radioactive tritium was motivated by short term cost cutting not protection of the Pacific ocean environment or the health and livelihoods of communities along the Fukushima coast,\u201d said Kazue Suzuki, Energy Campaigner at Greenpeace Japan. \u201cWe have raised the water crisis with the UN International Maritime Organization and firmly stand with local communities, especially fisheries, who are strongly opposed to any plans to discharge contaminated water into their fishing grounds.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The report concludes that the water crisis remains unresolved, and will be for the foreseeable future. The only viable option to protect the environment and the communities along the Fukushima coast being long term storage for the contaminated water.<\/span><\/p>\n

The discharge option for water containing high levels of radioactive tritium was recommended as least cost by the Government\u2019s Tritiated Water Task Force and promoted by Japan\u2019s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA). The Task Force concluded in 2016 that \u201c<\/span>sea discharge would cost 3.4 billion yen (US$30 million) and take seven years and four months to complete. It concluded that this was cheapest and quickest of the five methods.<\/span><\/a>\u201d However, technical proposals for removing tritium were submitted to the same Government Task Force by multiple nuclear companies with estimated costs ranging from US$2-US$20 billion to US$50-US$180 billion depending on the technology used. These were dismissed as not viable but without detailed technical consideration. <\/span><\/p>\n

TEPCO has claimed since 2013 that its ALPS technology would reduce radioactivity levels \u201c<\/span>to lower than the permissible level for discharge<\/span><\/a>.\u201d However, in September 2018 TEPCO<\/span> admitted that the processing of over 800,000 tons of contaminated water in 1000 storage tanks,<\/span><\/a> including strontium, had failed to remove radioactivity to below regulatory limits, including for strontium-90, a bone seeking radionuclide that causes cancer. TEPCO knew of the failure of the technology from 2013. The Greenpeace report details technical problems with the ALPS system.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Fukushima Daiichi site, due its location, is subject to massive groundwater contamination which TEPCO has also failed to stop. Each week an additional 2-4000 tonnes of contaminated water is added to the storage tanks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Japanese government and TEPCO set an objective of \u2018solving\u2019 the radioactive water crisis by 2020 \u2013 that was never credible. TEPCO has finally admitted that its ALPS technology has failed to reduce levels of strontium, and other hazardous radioactivity, to below regulatory limits,\u201d said Shaun Burnie, nuclear specialist with Greenpeace Germany.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is there is no end to the water crisis at Fukushima, a crisis compounded by poor decision making by both TEPCO and the government. Discharging into the Pacific is the worst option and must be ruled out. The only viable option, and it\u2019s not without risks, is the long term storage of this water in robust steel tanks over at least the next century, and the parallel development of water processing technology.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Greenpeace offices are calling on the government and TEPCO to urgently reassess options for the long term management of highly contaminated water at Fukushima Daiichi. Paramount in any future decision making should be the protection of the environment and the interests of the those in the front line – the communities and fishing industries of Fukushima\u2019s Pacific coast.<\/span><\/p>\n

END<\/span><\/p>\n

Photos and video can be accessed <\/b>here<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Notes<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n

“TEPCO Water Crisis” briefing can be accessed <\/span>here<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Contact<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist, Greenpeace Germany, sburnie@greenpeace.org – +49 151 6432 0548<\/span><\/p>\n

Greenpeace International Press Desk, pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org, phone: +31 (0) 20 718 2470 (available 24 hours)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The decision not to develop water processing technology…was motivated by short term cost cutting not protection of the Pacific ocean environment or the health and livelihoods of communities..”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":20352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69,73],"tags":[65,109,128],"p4-page-type":[98],"class_list":["post-20351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","category-social-and-economic-systems","tag-energy-revolution","tag-nuclear","tag-fukushima","p4-page-type-press-release"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20351"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27299,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20351\/revisions\/27299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20351"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=20351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}