Late last month, the Japanese government began discharge of what is anticipated to be 31,200 tons of waste water in a total of four releases from the plant by next March. Before going ahead, Japan got the approval of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which said the planned water release would have a “negligible” impact on people and the environment.
Following the seafood ban, Japan is now threatening legal action against China in the World Trade Organization. Tensions between the two countries, already high, are now higher. Social media in both countries is alive with mutual acrimony, and diplomats of both are not mincing words.
This controversial Japanese action is born of what Tokyo says is necessity. The Japanese government has been trying to put the Fukushima disaster behind it since March 2011, when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake provoked a tsunami that caused the meltdown of three of the plant’s nuclear reactors.
As part of the clean-up, radioactive water has been stored at the plant ever since. But now, more than 1,000 storage tanks are filled to 98 per cent of their capacity of 1.37 million tons and need to be emptied, the Japanese say, so they can continue with decommissioning the plant.
The Japanese plan is to drain the tanks slowly over decades. One problem is that the technology to remove all radioactive elements from the waste water before piping it into the sea does not exist. One radioactive element – tritium – cannot be removed. Instead, the water is being diluted to reduce the tritium content to safe low levels.
Although the IAEA has given this Japanese plan the go-ahead, the Chinese are less than persuaded that this approach ensures safety. Hence their import ban.
And thus the potential WTO dispute, which, if it is not first resolved to the satisfaction of both countries, could lead to important new rulings under the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, or the SPS agreement.