The Fukushima nuclear plant was destroyed by severe earthquake and tsunami in 2011, which led to water accumulation.
Japan has started releasing treated radioactive water (accumulated for more than a decade) from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean. According to U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, this water discharge into Pacific will have a negligible impact on human being and on the environment. However, neighbouring nations are still concerned.
Due to this, the nuclear plant along with the reactors are non-operational currently. However, some time is still required for complete cooling, as wastewater kept on accumulating. Due to this tragedy, even the groundwater of this region became contaminated.
As per the current scenario, approximately, 350 million gallons of treated water are stored in over 1,000 tanks on-site.
As carrying capacity of these tanks are exceeding, Japan government decided to release some water into Pacific ocean.
"ALPS and other systems to remove some of the most hazardous isotopes, like cesium-137 and strontium-90," a Japan government official said. However, radioactive isotope Tritium is impossible to remove.
Secondly, they are planning to pass the diluted water through a tunnel below the seafloor to a point off the coast of Fukushima, leading to more dilution. However, the whole plan will take decades to complete due to vastness of stored water.
According to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), this plan is aligned with the international safety standards. The IAEA will also perform independent monitoring for safe discharge.
As tritium's half-life is 12 years, it will not sustain in the environment for a long period.
"We've got to put radiation in perspective, and the plant release — if it's done properly — then the doses that people get and the doses that the ecosystem get just won't be significant, in my opinion," Smith said.
Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. said: "out of the limited options Japan has for this wastewater, none of them are good, but In my view, I think that their current plan, unfortunately is probably the least bad of a bunch of bad options."
"The idea of deliberately discharging hazardous substances into the environment, into the ocean is repugnant," Lyman said. "But unfortunately, if you do look at it from the technical perspective, it's hard to argue that the impacts of this discharge would be worse than those that are occurring at nuclear power plants that are operating worldwide."
However, Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said, "where it's much easier to monitor, options could have included mixing it into concrete to immobilize it."
Buesseler doesn't think the water will pose a risk across the Pacific. "We don't expect to see widespread direct health effects, either on humans or on marine life," he said.
"Nearshore in Japan could be affected in the long term because of accumulation of non-tritium forms of radioactivity," he said.
Buesseler, also a consultant for the Pacific Islands Forum, noted: "many of these countries were subjected to high levels of radioactive fallout as a result of atmospheric nuclear tests during the Cold War. There are islands they can't return to...because of legacy contamination."
Moreover, "they're suffering in many ways from climate change and sea level rise more than the rest of the world," he mentioned.
Whereas, China, the largest buyer of seafood from Japan, said it would block all Japanese imports.
