Chinese plants already discharge water more radioactive than Fukushima

Faced with criticism from Beijing, the Japanese government is circulating a document mentioning tritium levels 6.5 times higher than the maximum set by TEPCO. A meeting with the IAEA director general about the discharge is expected in the coming days, which for Kishida should begin before the summer.

Tokyo () – China’s nuclear power plants are already dumping into the ocean, unsupervised, water contaminated with radioactive substances at levels 6.5 times higher than the much-discussed levels of the Fukushima plant. This is stated by the Japanese government, reacting to criticism from Beijing regarding the discharge planned by Tokyo.

The Japanese government has been announcing for some time its intention to begin this summer the controversial process of dumping the cooling water from the nuclear power plant at the epicenter of the “triple catastrophe” of 2011 into the Pacific Ocean. Kishida, meet for this with the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, who will present a draft of the report prepared by his experts in the field.

In recent months, Japan has tried to overcome the resistance of South Korea, where public opinion is very concerned about the possible consequences, especially in fishing. It even allowed a delegation from Seoul to visit the Fukushima plant to gather information on how the spill is planned and what precautions will be taken.

In the meantime, however, the Beijing government is particularly active in mobilizing against the evacuation of cooling water from the affected nuclear power plant, and it has wide resonance in the Chinese state media. The accusation that Tokyo’s move could cause serious damage to the environment has been officially reiterated in the past three months by no less than three senior Chinese officials: Ambassador to Japan Wu Jianghao, China’s permanent representative to the IAEA Li Song, and Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin. And it is not difficult to see the coincidence with the increasingly heated tones of the confrontation with Tokyo over the question of the “containment” of Beijing’s expansionism in the South China Sea.

The Tokyo counter-information campaign falls within this framework. According to data from the government document cited by the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, in 2020 water with about 143 trillion becquerels of tritium was released from the Qinshan III nuclear power plant in Zhejiang province. In 2021, about 112 trillion becquerels of water were released from the Yangjiang Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong Province, 102 trillion becquerels from the Ningde Nuclear Power Plant in Fujian Province, and 90 trillion becquerels from the NPP. Hongyanhe nuclear power plant in Liaoning province.

TEPCO – the Japanese company that manages the Fukushima plant – plans to limit the annual level of tritium released by the Fukushima plant to 22 trillion becquerels, arguing that with these amounts the tritium levels in the sea after discharge will remain very below the standards set by the World Health Organization and other organizations.

Photo: IAEA Imagebank/WikiCommons