Today is the first class of your new four class set. We will begin class with a casual conversation. Our reading this week is about Korean Air. We will discuss the future class plan. I have included some listening material about Fukushima waste water. Please listen and follow the transcript.
Click HERE for the reading
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Three hundred fifty million gallons - that's how much radioactive wastewater Japan has stored at the now-defunct Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, which melted down after a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The government began releasing some of that water into the Pacific Ocean today. International inspectors have approved the plan to release the water slowly over decades. Still, many people are concerned. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel and Kat Lonsdorf are here to talk us through the science behind the decision - good to have you both in the studio.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Hello.
SHAPIRO: Kat, you made a reporting trip to Fukushima in 2020. You went to the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Why is there so much radioactive water there?
LONSDORF: So the water comes from a couple of sources. First, it's water that was used to cool the reactors when they melted down in 2011. But then they've also had to continue pumping water in to cool those same reactors. Even though they're offline and being decommissioned, you can't just turn a nuclear reactor off. And then there's also groundwater that's filtered into the site over the years. So this water keeps building up. It's being stored in these giant tanks right now. There are about a thousand on the site. I went to see them when I was there, and they just stretch on for as far as the eye can see. And that was three years ago. So they're really running out of room now. Managing and storing that water safely has been a huge problem, which is why the government has been treating it to release it.
SHAPIRO: And, Geoff, what does that actually mean to treat these 350 million gallons of water?
BRUMFIEL: It all comes down to one word, Ari, which is filtration. The Japanese government has basically built the world's largest Brita filter. And what they're trying to do is basically remove as many of the radioactive elements as they can. So these are things like strontium and cesium, which are dangerous for humans and animals, and they can get those down below government safety limits. But there is a radioactive isotope they can't get rid of. And that's called tritium. Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen. And hydrogen is, you know, part of H2O. It's part of the water itself. So they can't filter it. And that's something that's made this plan controversial. Now, I should say tritium isn't the most dangerous radioactive element out there. It doesn't build up inside plants and animals. And it has a half-life of just 12 years as opposed to something like uranium 235, which sticks around for 700 million years. So it could be worse.
LONSDORF: And, Ari, I think some helpful context here is that, for better or worse, functioning nuclear power plants around the world release tritium regularly for the reasons Geoff just explained. We haven't figured out a way to filter it out of water. So not to pile on, but this is happening all over the place. There are standards that have been set for it. And in some places, it's happening at levels much higher than what we're seeing in this release.
SHAPIRO: And yet there is still local and regional objections, which we'll talk about in a moment. First, tell us how Japan is actually putting this water into the ocean.
LONSDORF: There are a couple steps. First, they're going to dilute the radioactive water so that there's a lot less tritium in every drop. The government says that they will bring tritium levels to well below all safety limits. Then they're going to take that diluted water and pass it through a super-long tunnel under the sea floor to a point off the coast of Fukushima and the Pacific Ocean. And that will dilute it further. And like you said, Ari, they're not just dumping it all in. They're going to do this slowly. It's going to take decades to empty out those tanks.
SHAPIRO: You've both been talking with a lot of scientists about this plan. What are they telling you?
LONSDORF: So generally, most scientists seem to agree that this will have a negligible impact on the environment if it's done to plan. I talked to Jim Smith. He's a professor of environmental science at Portsmouth University (ph) in the U.K. He's been studying radioactivity in waterways impacted by nuclear waste for decades.
JIM SMITH: The risk is really, really, really low, and I would call it not a risk at all. We've got to, you know, put radiation in perspective. And the planned 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.
BRUMFIEL: But even if that's true, not all scientists think this is a good idea. I spoke to Ken Buesseler at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. He worries about the precedent Japan sets by doing this, even though he agrees the ocean will dilute the radioactivity.
KEN BUESSELER: It's a big place. We're not going to suffer directly from the doses from this. But it's one of the many things we're adding to an ocean that - if you have an alternative, we certainly should consider more fully. And I don't think that's been done in the past couple of years.
BRUMFIEL: And Buesseler's also worried that even small quantities of contaminants missed by that filtration system I mentioned could slowly accumulate in the sediments around the plant. That could cause problems for local fisheries down the road.
SHAPIRO: Our colleague Anthony Kuhn was reporting from Fukushima yesterday, where people are worried. There have been protests in South Korea. China has banned seafood from the area. Are people overreacting?
LONSDORF: No, I don't think people in Fukushima are overreacting at all. I mean, during and immediately after the disaster, the government and TEPCO - that's the company that runs the nuclear power plant - were both pretty deceitful with data and information. They've since apologized and are trying to be more transparent. But there's this deep distrust that's still there. And, you know, Fukushima is a big fishing area. So even if scientists say that the fish from there is fine, if people around the world don't trust that and won't buy it, that's not good.
BRUMFIEL: You know, there's a geopolitical side to this as well. You know, there's a history of radioactive contamination in the Pacific. It was the site of nuclear testing during the Cold War, and many Pacific Island nations suffered the consequences. Ken Buesseler is working with some of them. And, you know, he told me the trauma runs deep. Some of these islands are still off-limits. So the idea of a developed country using the Pacific to unload its radioactive wastewater just upsets quite a few people on principle.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Geoff Brumfiel and Kat Lonsdorf. Thank you.
LONSDORF: Thanks so much.
BRUMFIEL: Thank you.
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