Korea's Fukushima inspection team focuses on long-term management of wastewater

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

National

Tue, September 26, 2023 | 04:40

Foreign Affairs

Korea's Fukushima inspection team focuses on long-term management of wastewater

Posted : 2023-05-31 17:06

Updated : 2023-06-01 09:47

Nuclear Safety and Security Commission Chairperson Yoo Guk-hee, front, speaks during a briefing on Korean experts' on-site inspection of the crippled Fukushima plant in Japan, at Government Complex Seoul, Wednesday. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

By Lee Hae-rin

A Korean inspection team that visited Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant said Wednesday that they are focusing on evaluating how the facilities and systems to treat contaminated water can be managed stably for the next three decades and beyond.

The experts from the team said meaningful progress was made during the inspection, but added that additional analysis and more data are needed for an accurate conclusion regarding Tokyo's plan to discharge the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.

The 21-member inspection team, headed by Nuclear Safety and Security Commission Chairperson Yoo Guk-hee, announced its findings from a six-day inspection last week of Japan's water discharge plans, aimed at assessing whether the contaminated water is treated safely enough to be discharged into the sea starting this summer.

"This inspection has achieved meaningful progress in its scientific and technological review through the on-site inspections and the acquisition of more detailed data," Yoo said during a press briefing in Seoul.

According to Yoo, the inspection team confirmed that the major equipment in the plant's Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), such as the emergency isolation valves designed to stop the discharge of contaminated water in case of an abnormality was "installed in accordance with the plan."

But he said additional analysis is required to evaluate whether the facilities are appropriate to manage the system for a longer period of time.

"We focused on whether the ALPS is fully capable of removing radioactive substances and can be managed stably for a long time," Yoon said.

Considering Japan's plan to release the water for the next 30 years, he said, "We do not rule out the possibility that the release will take more than 30 years, and we'll also review that."

The Fukushima plant, whose cooling systems were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, now stores over 1.3 million tons of water in its ALPS and plans to release radioactive water that it claims to be treated starting this summer.

The delegation faced criticism from opposition parties and the public regarding the effectiveness of the inspection, because it was not allowed to collect samples of the contaminated water and merely received information provided by the Japanese authorities.

Yoo and the team's experts who attended the briefing refused to comment on alternative management possibilities for the radioactive water, such as storing it in Japan's territory for a longer period, considering that the future environmental effects of the controversial water discharge are yet unknown.

The timeline to announce the government's conclusion concerning the inspection is yet to be determined.

The inspection team's report immediately triggered criticism for lacking concrete conclusions.

Rep. Park Kwang-on, the floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), denounced the inspection team's claim of "meaningful progress" as an attempt to deceive the public.

Park said in a statement released later in the day that he plans to hold a public hearing on the inspection team with related committees to cross-examine and verify its inspection results and set up a taskforce to file a lawsuit with the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea so as to stop Fukushima's discharge of contaminated water into the ocean.

According to the Korea Federation for Environmental Movements survey announced last Thursday, 85.7 percent of Koreans disagree with Japan's plan to discharge contaminated water while 79 percent don't trust the Japanese government's claim regarding the treatment of the radioactive water and environmental hazards before release.

lhr@koreatimes.co.kr