Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Professor Tom Scott is the academic lead for the University of Bristol’s Sellafield Centre of Expertise for Uranium and Reactive Metals. He said that he considered the discharging of Japan’s contaminated water into the sea to be the right decision. Although other alternatives such as continued storage were investigated, he said that “ultimately this is a situation where the actual quantity of tritium being discharged per litre of water is incredibly low, and hence the risk posed to the environment and people is incredibly low”.
     Professor Scott added that “When released into the Pacific, the tritium is further diluted into a vast body of water and would quickly get to a radioactivity level which is not discernibly different from normal sea water. It poses very little risk and the risk itself decreases with time due to the relatively short radioactive half life… meaning that the amount of tritium – and hence the risk – continually reduces.” Sea water already contains small amounts of tritium, according to Scott. He said that “Tritium is produced naturally in small quantities in the upper atmosphere and gets into the oceans through rainfall.” However, some of the atmospheric tritium was also left behind from nuclear weapons testing.
     Nigel Marks is a physicist at Australia’s Curtin University. He said that the radioactivity in the Fukushima water was almost entirely tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. He went on to say that “For scale, the Pacific Ocean contains 8,400 grams of pure tritium, while Japan will release 0.06 grams of tritium every year. The minuscule amount of extra radiation won’t make the tiniest jot of difference. A lifetime’s worth of seafood caught a few kilometers from the ocean outlet has the tritium radiation equivalent of one bite of a banana.”
     Associate Professor Tony Hooker is the director of the Centre for Radiation Research, Education and Innovation at the University of Adelaide. He said that this is a common practice. He added that “I would like to reiterate that the release of tritium from nuclear facilities into waterways has and is undertaken world-wide with no evidence of environmental or human health implications. I welcome the news about the impending release and support Japan’s decision to commence disposal.” The Japanese government had a robust radiation management plan in place that had been approved by radiation protection agencies around the globe. “I think with the likely comprehensive independent monitoring of the environment to occur around the release site of Fukushima, that this will hopefully alleviate some of the fear that has been generated around this issue.”
     The government and TEPCO, the owner of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, say that the water will be treated and diluted with seawater to levels that are even safer than current international standards. The plan is to release seven thousand eight hundred tons of treated water in the first seventeen days. Thirty-one thousand tons will have been released by March of 2024. This will empty just ten of the thousand tanks at the site. Seawater and marine life will be regularly tested throughout this period for any potential impact. The results will be reported on the government and TEPCO websites.