Polluted water that is said to be released into the sea from the shattered Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant contains radioactive material that has the potential to destroy human DNA. Green area The investigation said.
The environmental group claims that 1.23 million tons of water stored in more than 1,000 tanks at the plant contains “dangerous” levels of the radioactive carbon-14 isotope, in addition to amounts of tritium that have already been widely reported.
Publish the report Tide Halt 2020: The Truth of Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Crisis This comes days after Japanese media announced that the government was close to approving it Free the water In the Pacific, despite the objections of local fishermen who say the move will Destroy their livelihoods.
“We cannot postpone the issue forever,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said this week. “We want to make a responsible decision as soon as possible.”
While most attention has been focused on tritium – which cannot be removed by the in situ filtration system used by the Tokyo Electric Power plant operator [Tepco] Green area Japan Greenpeace East Asia said that the radiocarbon in the stored water will also be discharged.
The report stated that the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,370 years and is “incorporated into all living matter.”
It is concentrated in fish at a level thousands of times higher than tritium. Carbon-14 is particularly important as a major contributor to a mass human radiation dose and has the potential to damage human DNA. ”
The Japanese government and Tepco refer to water – which becomes contaminated when used to cool the plant Reactors damaged by the tsunami – As “treated water” and give the impression that it contains only tritium.
Tepco’s advanced liquid treatment system removes highly radioactive materials from the water but is unable to filter tritium, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen that nuclear power plants dilute and routinely discharge with water into the ocean.
Greenpeace said it confirmed with TEPCO that the system is not designed to remove carbon 14.
“Nearly 10 years after the start of the disaster, Tepco and the Japanese government are still covering up the scale of the crisis in Fukushima Daiichi,” said Sean Burney, author of the report and a senior nuclear specialist at Germany’s Greenpeace.
They have intentionally withheld detailed information about radioactive material in polluted water for years. They failed to explain to the citizens of Fukushima, broader Japan and neighboring countries like South Korea And China that the polluted water that will be dumped into the Pacific Ocean contains dangerous levels of carbon 14.
These, along with other radionuclides in the water, will remain dangerous for thousands of years with the potential to cause genetic damage. It is another reason to abandon these plans. “
The Japanese government is expected to announce a decision on the fate of the water next week. Media reports stated that the project will start in 2022 at the earliest and will take decades to complete. The Yomiuri Shimbun said the water in Fukushima Daiichi will be diluted inside the plant before it is released so that it is 40 times less concentrated.
The pressure to make a decision is building as the storage space at the nuclear plant site shrinks, with Tepco estimating that all available tanks will be full by mid-2022.
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