Japan started to pump treated radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, destroyed in a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, into the Pacific Ocean.
- China announced it is suspending Japanese seafood imports with immediate effect. South Korea’s largest opposition party has amped up protests.
- The Fukushima water is being treated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). Since 2011, TEPCO has been in charge of decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, and managing the waste.
- The water has been treated with multiple techniques, notably the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), which removes 62 types of radioactive materials. However, it doesn’t remove tritium.
About tritium
- TEPCO and the Japanese government argue that the concentration of tritium does not exceed international standards, in particular, those of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.
- According to TEPCO’s website, the radiation emitted by tritium is “extremely weak, and can be blocked with a single sheet of paper.
- It says that one can’t remove tritium because it is identical to hydrogen. So removing it, chemically extracting it from wastewater becomes quite impossible.
- Tritium is easily absorbed by the bodies of living creatures when it is in the form of tritiated water, and rapidly distributed throughout bodies via blood.
- Since tritiated water can pass through the placenta, it could lead to developmental effects in babies when ingested by pregnant women.
- Tritium is produced naturally in the upper atmosphere when cosmic rays strike nitrogen molecules in the air.
- Tritium is also produced during nuclear weapons explosions, and as a byproduct in nuclear reactors.
- Although tritium can be a gas, its most common form is in water because radioactive tritium reacts with oxygen to form water.
