Members of the pro-Beijing Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) have rallied against Japan’s plan to release wastewater from a nuclear power plant into the sea. They accused Tokyo of ignoring objections from the local agricultural sector and neighbouring countries.
Speaking outside Exchange Square in Central, where the Consulate-General of Japan in Hong Kong is located, lawmaker Joephy Chan said Japan had “selfishly” chosen the cheapest method of handling the wastewater – an approach that would endanger marine life worldwide.
Chan and other FTU lawmakers chanted slogans, which were also printed on banners reading: “strongly condemn Japan’s irresponsible ways” and “stand against the Japanese government’s selfish dumping of wastewater.”
Treated water still radioactive
Since the 2011 nuclear accident, 1.3 million tons of wastewater has been used to cool damaged reactors at the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, according to official figures. Japan announced last month that it planned to incrementally release the water into the Pacific over the next three decades. The water, albeit treated, is still radioactive.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, began filling an undersea tunnel with wastewater, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported last week. The tunnel is built to guide treated, diluted wastewater to a point about 1 kilometre offshore.
TEPCO utilises a treatment system that the International Atomic Energy Agency — the UN’s nuclear watchdog — says removes 62 kinds of radionuclide isotopes, but not tritium, which is still found in the treated water.
According to the watchdog, tritium cannot penetrate the body through human skin, and only presents a radiation hazard if inhaled or digested “in very large doses.” The isotope has a radioactive half-life of 12.32 years, meaning that only half of any given amount of tritium will remain after that period. Tritiated water has a biological half-life in the human body of 7 to 14 days.
Hong Kong to ‘ensure public health’
On Monday, Chan said that the government’s insistence on dumping nuclear waste water from the plant would also endanger food safety. Citing TEPCO, she said the level of radioactivity in fish caught near the plant was found to be 180 times the maximum stipulated in Japan’s food safety law.
Chan also quoted Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan in saying that the authorities will consider banning food imports from high-risk areas of Japan, adding that the government would have to exercise its role as a “gatekeeper” to ensure public health.
Also outside the consulate, federation member Michael Luk said Tokyo provided no credible scientific explanations, nor has it consulted its geopolitical neighbours, over its plan: “[Discharging nuclear wastewater] is a major issue concerning the global marine environment and public health, not a private affair for Japan.”
Luk added that he would remain opposed to the wastewater handling plan “unless the Japanese prime minister uses nuclear wastewater to cook rice and shower.”
Correction 4/7/2023: An earlier version of this article contained an image of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant with a caption incorrectly stating that it showed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. We regret the error.
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