Japan's discharge of radioactive water into Pacific Ocean unlikely to affect B.C., scientist says

On Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. PT, Japan initiated the release of radioactive water from a nuclear power plant managed by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), more than a decade after the facility sustained catastrophic damage.

On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi plant was devastated by a massive magnitude 9.0 earthquake that triggered powerful tsunami waves, resulting in the meltdowns of three of its reactors. This incident stands as one of the most severe nuclear catastrophes in world history.

Having received approval from the Japanese government two years ago and after being given the green light by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency last month, the discharge of radioactive water marks a critical phase in the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, a process that also involves the extraction of molten fuel destroyed by tsunamis, according to TEPCO.

The plant operator has indicated it will release the water in small quantities, with a number of safety checks in place. The initial release totalling 7,800 cubic metres (equivalent to about three Olympic-sized swimming pools), will occur over a span of approximately 17 days.

According to the test results released by TEPCO on Thursday, the water contains up to 63 becquerels of tritium per litre, which falls below the World Health Organization's limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre for drinking water.

A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity. 

TEPCO expects the process of releasing the wastewater, which currently amounts to over 1.3 million metric tonnes, will take about 30 years.

Japan's decision to discharge radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean has led to opposition from its neighbouring countries. China, for instance, announced on Thursday a ban on seafood imports from Japan.

Jay Cullen, a University of Victoria professor of earth and ocean sciences specializing in chemical traces in natural waters, spoke to Carolina de Ryk, the host of CBC's Daybreak North, regarding the implications of Japan's release of radioactive water on British Columbia and Canada.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What do you think about the approved plan to start releasing water from the Fukushima nuclear plant?

Everyone should be clear about what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did when reviewing the plan of the Japanese government and TEPCO, the company that is responsible for the destroyed reactor in Fukushima.

They really looked at the technical aspects of taking this contaminated water and removing potentially harmful radionuclides from it, and then mixing it with coastal seawater and pumping it out to a tunnel about a kilometre offshore into the coastal area. It really was a technical review of what that meant for environmental and public health. 

But there was little done in terms of consultation with, for example, fisheries co-ops along the coast of Japan and consideration of some of the political and social aspects of the plan.

It was really a technical review, so I think people should understand that the way the review was carried out largely ignored some of the concerns of people who rely on the ocean for their livelihood in Japan. 

But based on what we learned from the very large releases that occurred when the reactors first melted down in 2011, we don't expect that the additional radionuclides that will be added to the North Pacific through this activity will have any negative impact on our ecosystem here on the eastern side of the Pacific, up and down the coast of British Columbia, so that's good news.

Can you take me back to 2011 when the tsunami struck this facility and the monitoring that you took on after that?

Like many people along the coast here in North America, when it was clear that the power plant there at Fukushima Daiichi was in trouble and that there was a danger of damage to the fuel and meltdowns, I was very concerned for the health and safety of my family and friends here living along the coast.

I was watching quite carefully to see what would happen there, and when it became clear that there were massive releases of radioactive elements into the atmosphere and ultimately into the North Pacific, I was professionally but also personally invested in understanding what the potential impacts would be.

The Canadian government, including the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Radiation Protection Bureau that is working for Health Canada, were on top of that situation, monitoring what was coming over in the atmosphere and in the ocean. But a lot of that information wasn't getting to the public. People really had questions about what the potential impact might be to their livelihoods, so people who are fishing in the North Pacific or people who were surfing or kayaking in the North Pacific along our coast wanted to know what their exposure would be to this ionizing radiation. 

I helped to organize a world-class team of university and government scientists to look at what was in the water and what was ending up in our fish and shellfish along the coast to determine what the exposure of people who are eating salmon, for example, would be or the exposure to people who were surfing off Tofino or other parts of the coast. I think that the team did a great job in making these analyses and getting the information to the public. 

Now we know that these releases are going to be made in a controlled manner. I have colleagues in government and other universities who are already monitoring what we see off the coast now so that any impact that results from these planned releases will know exactly what the impact will be.

People are trying to get out ahead of this and plan a monitoring program so that we can again get information to people, who can then make decisions about what they want to do to protect their friends and family if they're consuming seafood from the North Pacific.

WATCH | IAEA director general explains monitoring of Japan's discharge of radioactive water:

The Chinese government has just called this irresponsible. They say Japan is treating the Pacific Ocean like a private sewer. However, the plan was approved by the UN nuclear watchdog as a key part of decommissioning this plant. What could it still contain?

The water is contaminated because it's come into contact with the damaged fuel inside the reactor buildings at the site. It's been stored there on an ongoing basis and there's quite a large volume there that water is treated to remove gamma-emitting isotopes that can cause problems when they get into living organisms, but the system that's being used can't remove tritium, which is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that's actually in the water itself.

So most of the public concern has revolved around tritium, although it's unlikely that the amounts that are going to be released will be mixed with coastal water and effectively moved offshore in this undersea tunnel. 

I think that there is going to be real-time monitoring of the water that's being pumped, treated, mixed and then discharged to the coastal ocean, with the idea that if there are levels that are potentially a problem or that exceed international standards that the process will be paused and that water retreated before being disposed of. 

Regarding other nations, I'm thinking specifically of the Marshall Islands. Some Pacific island peoples, who have historically been exposed to radioactive contamination from weapons testing in the last century, are quite sensitive and rightly so to the disposal of radioactive elements in the Pacific Ocean that they identify with and and have spiritual and cultural connections with. 

I think that the consultative process could have been more transparent and could have been more inclusive to hear the concerns that some of these other Pacific nations have with the proposed plan. 

There's a lot of global attention being paid to the start of this release, but things are getting put into the Pacific Ocean all the time. Where do you think the conversation needs to go when it comes to what is being released into the ocean and how we monitor the effects of it?

I think, ultimately, when one considers the issue of Fukushima and the very long-term engineering problem of dealing with the contamination of that site, we don't really have the technology to deal with that cleanup. The waste that's been generated through the damage to the plant will have an environmental impact — whether it's measurable or not — and a public health impact as well. 

I think a proper approach to dealing with this waste really involves looking at all options with respect to containing it and disposing of it, and ultimately the Japanese government and TEPCO have arrived at the decision that the impact of this waste is minimized by putting it into the Pacific Ocean, and that might be the the best-case scenario for dealing with this enormous problem.

I'm certainly not a fan of thinking of the oceans being there at our service to absorb our waste through power generation or shipping. Ultimately, our oceans are the repository of carbon dioxide that we release to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, and the oceans are somewhat looked on as a storage space for waste from our activities. That's troubling.

But ultimately, when we consider Fukushima — whether or not the radionuclides — their environmental impact is minimized through this process. I'm not sure what the impacts are and whether they've been measured for other ways of dealing with the waste.

But it's clear that this process is starting, and so as an international citizen, Canada, a country that does develop and use nuclear technology, we really have a duty to monitor and to hold to account this plan and to determine what impacts there are from the disposal of these radioactive isotopes in the North Pacific.