China has banned the imports of all aquatic products from Japan after the latter released wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea on Thursday.
The ban took effect immediately on Thursday as Tokyo decided to dispose of 1.34 million tons of wastewater from the nuclear power plant, which was destroyed by a tsunami in 2011. The wastewater, accumulated over a period of three decades, had filtered and diluted.
Beijing’s measure came at a time of heightened political tensions between China and Japan.
On August 20, US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol held an annual trilateral summit at Camp David in Maryland and vowed to strengthen diplomatic and military ties and technological cooperation. Chinese media said the US is trying to set up a mini-NATO in Asia.
“The Japanese government’s unilateral action to start releasing the Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean is extremely selfish and irresponsible in disregard of the international community’s interests,” Shu Yuting, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce, said in a media briefing on Thursday. “China firmly opposes and strongly condemns it.”
“From the moment Japan started the discharge, it has put itself in the dock in front of the international community and is bound to face international condemnation for many years to come,” said Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson of the Chinese foreign ministry.
“The Japanese government failed to prove the legitimacy and legality of the ocean discharge decision, the long-term reliability of the purification facility, and the authenticity and accuracy of the nuclear-contaminated water data,” he said.
He said Japan failed to prove that the ocean discharge is safe and harmless to the marine environment and people’s health, and that the monitoring plan is sound and effective. He said the nation also failed to have thorough consultations with other stakeholders.
Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong on Tuesday summoned Japan’s Ambassador to China Hideo Tarumi to make serious démarches to the Japanese side on the matter. But the effort has failed to change Japan’s mind.
Radioactive levels
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog, said in a report on July 4 that Japan’s approach and activities to discharge Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS)-treated water are consistent with relevant international safety standards.
The IAEA said Japan has set a maximum tritium concentration (1,500 Bq per liter) for the discharge and a total annual tritium discharge limit (22 TBq per year) in order to minimize the impact on the surrounding environment.
Becquerel (Bq) is the measurement unit of the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. MBq stands for one million Bq while TBq means one trillion Bq.
According to the IAEA report, Japan’s regulatory limit for discharge of radioactive wastewater is 60,000, 2,000 and 9 Bq/L for tritium, carbon-14 and iodine-129, respectively. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) detection limits for the Fukushima wastewater are 210, 1.6 and 0.026 for tritium, carbon-14 and iodine-129, respectively.
The maximum concentration of tritium that Japan will discharge to the sea is 0.00026 Bq/L, which is three to four orders of magnitude lower than the natural background level (0.1-1 Bq/L) in the Pacific Ocean. The amount of carbon-14 in Japan’s ALPS-treated water to be released each year is about 0.002 TBq, which is about 500,000 times lower than the global inventory (1,000 TBq) due to natural processes.
The amount of iodine-129 in Japan’s wastewater to be discharged per year is about 30-300 MBq, which is about 3,000-30,000 times lower than the steady state inventory (1 TBq) of naturally occurring iodine-129 in all of the oceans.
“The total amount of tritium, carbon-14 and iodine-129 to be released each year in the discharge of ALPS-treated water will be well below the amount of these radionuclides produced by natural processes each year,” said the IAEA.
In 2010, the World Health Organisation (WHO) set guidance for levels of tritium in drinking water at 10,000 Bq/L.
‘Drink it!’
On May 15, South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said he would be willing to drink Japan’s wastewater if it was treated with the ALPS.
The Japanese government said in June that Chinese nuclear power plants have been releasing into the ocean water containing tritium at levels up to 6.5 times higher than the annual amount that would be released from the Fukushima nuclear plant. For example, the Qinshan Phase III Nuclear Power Plant released wastewater containing about 143 TBq of tritium in 2020, compared with Fukushima’s cap of 22 TBq.
This argument did not move the Chinese. “It is against common sense to put the nuclear-contaminated water from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant and the water released from normally functioning nuclear power plants in the same category, given the uncertainty about whether the former will meet safety standards after treatment,” Wang said in a media briefing on July 11.
He said the wastewater in Fukushima comes from the cooling water injected into the damaged reactor cores, as well as seepage of groundwater and rainwater after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and it contains various radionuclides released from the damaged reactor cores. He said it is totally different from the normal water discharged from operating nuclear power plants.
“If some people think that the nuclear-contaminated water from Fukushima is safe to drink or swim in, we suggest that Japan save it for these people to drink or swim in,” he said.
A Tianjin-based writer says in a recent article that Moon Jae-in, former president of South Korea, had expressed concerns about Japan’s nuclear water discharge plan in 2021 but his successor Yoon, who began his term in May 2022, endorsed it. He says Yoon was pushed by the US to improve the South Korea-Japan relations.
On Thursday, Hong Kong, the second largest importer of Japanese seafood after China, also prohibited the import of aquatic products originating from ten metropolises and prefectures of Japan. However, the city’s government allows outbound travellers to bring back Japanese seafood for self-use.
Some Sushi shops and Japanese restaurants in the city told the media that the government’s warning of Japanese food’s safety is unnecessary and will hurt their businesses although most of their raw materials actually come from Norway and Australia.
They said their revenue fell 30% this summer from a year ago as many people showed a preference for traveling abroad or going to the mainland rather than spending money locally after Hong Kong and China ended their Covid rules in early 2023.
Read: What China’s defense chief said in Moscow
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