Science behind the Fukushima Daiichi radioactive water release : Short Wave : NPR

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REGINA BARBER, HOST:

Hey, SHORT WAVErs. Regina Barber here with a power reporting duo, NPR's Kat Lonsdorf and Geoff Brumfiel. Hey.

KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Hey.

GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Hi there.

BARBER: So we brought you on the show today because you've been following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. It became news when it had multiple meltdowns following the massive earthquake that triggered a tsunami in 2011.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: 8.9 magnitude.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Fuel rods are now exposed. And if they stay that way, they could release radioactivity.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: It was the fifth-largest earthquake in history.

BRUMFIEL: Right. And a reactor meltdown is every bit as bad as it sounds. Basically, what it means is the nuclear fuel inside the reactor gets so hot, it starts to melt and clump together. And that can lead to a runaway chain reaction.

LONSDORF: Yeah. And so to stop that meltdown, they poured massive amounts of water onto that melted nuclear fuel. And even all these years later, they have to continue to do that because even though they're being decommissioned, that fuel is still hot. It needs to be cooled.

BRUMFIEL: And there's also groundwater that's been seeping into the plant since the accident. So all this water - it's up to 350 million gallons - has been building up on the site.

LONSDORF: And the issue is now that these tanks are running out of room.

BARBER: That does not sound good.

LONSDORF: No. And they just need a system to get rid of it. They've spent years developing a plan.

BARBER: And now Japan has started to release water as part of that plan, right?

BRUMFIEL: Right. On Thursday, they began releasing some of the water into the Pacific Ocean through an underground tunnel.

LONSDORF: And I will say this release is a controversial decision, both at the local scale - you know, fishermen are worried that people will be wary of their fish, for example, going forward and hurting their business - and on an international scale.

BARBER: So today on the show, as Japan releases radioactive water into the oceans, we get down to the science, what's in the water and why some are unhappy it's being released. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to SHORT WAVE from NPR.

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BARBER: Okay, Geoff, can we start really basic? What's in all this water that makes it such a tricky issue?

BRUMFIEL: Yeah, well, I mean, to start out, I think it's safe to say nuclear reactors are very controlled environments normally. And so part of what makes this tricky is this is a very uncontrolled environment. We have a lot of nuclear material and water mixing together. And so what's happening is radioactive elements like caesium-137 and strontium-90 are getting dissolved in the water. They're floating around. And they're very dangerous, frankly. If they get into the environment, they can be taken up by animals and plants and humans. And over time, they can make people sick, basically give them cancer. They can mess with the environment and all sorts of terrible ways. So the Japanese government has been spending years developing a system to filter out these radioactive isotopes. It's called the Advanced Liquid Processing System, or ALPS for short. And it can take care of quite a few of the isotopes. But there's one isotope they cannot get rid of, and that is tritium. Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, and hydrogen is part of H2O. It's part of water itself. So there's no way to get tritium out of this water. Now, tritium does occur naturally in the environment. It's not the most dangerous radioactive element out there. It has a half-life of just 12 years as opposed to, say, uranium-235, which sticks around for 700 million years.

LONSDORF: Yeah, and I just want to add for context here, you know, for better or worse, functioning nuclear power plants around the world release tritium regularly. It can't be removed from the water that's used to cool nuclear power plants on a regular basis, just for the reasons that Geoff explained. So this is happening all over and in some places at much higher levels than are in this release.

BARBER: And so you're Japan. You've decided to do this. You're treating the water. How do you release this water?

LONSDORF: So there are a couple of steps. First, they're going to dilute the radioactive water so that there's a lot less tritium in every drop. The government says they'll bring down the tritium levels to well below all safety limits. Then they're going to take that diluted water and pass it through that super long tunnel that Geoff mentioned earlier under the sea floor to a point off the coast of Fukushima in the Pacific Ocean. And that will dilute it further.

BRUMFIEL: And then, I mean, the final thing to say is they're not doing this quickly. They're really taking their time. It's going to be decades before they fully empty these tanks. And, of course, spreading out the release in time also dilutes it.

BARBER: So then what are scientists saying about this plan to release the water?

LONSDORF: Well, most scientists have agreed that this is going to 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 in the U.K. And 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.

BARBER: OK. But some scientists do have a problem with doing this, right, Geoff?

BRUMFIEL: Yeah, that's right. I spoke to Ken Buesseler. He's a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. And he really worries that the precedent Japan sets by doing this is a bad one, even though he agrees that, really, the impact is not likely to be great, at least not in the near term.

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 I should say Buesseler's also just a little skeptical that everything will go to plan. The Japanese authorities have been somewhat circumspect about what's in all of the tanks. Certainly, some of the tanks still have very high levels of radioactivity. And, you know, if even a small amount of the more harmful isotopes make it through the filtration system - and there's reason to believe they could - if they get to the seabed, they could build up over time. And that could, in turn, create problems for the fisheries in that area. So I think he doesn't see this as a Pacific-wide issue. But he is a little bit concerned that things might not go quite the way the Japanese are saying they will.

LONSDORF: That skepticism isn't coming from nowhere. You know, during and immediately after the disaster in 2011, the government, the Japanese government, and TEPCO, which is the company that runs the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant - they were both pretty, I guess, deceitful with data and information. They were not transparent. And they've since apologized and are trying to be more transparent. But there's this deep distrust that's still there.

BARBER: OK. So that's Japan. But what's the reaction internationally?

LONSDORF: Yeah, So there have been protests in Japan and also in South Korea. China has banned seafood imports from the area. And, you know, Fukushima is a big fishing industry. That industry's reputation was hurt majorly by the accident itself in 2011 and continues to be. So even if scientists say that the fish from there is going to be fine as this release happens, you know, if people around the world don't trust that and won't buy it, that's not good.

BRUMFIEL: And looking out even further into the Pacific, some of the island nations that are watching this are really feeling, I think, very uneasy by the situation. I mean, let's not forget that nuclear testing in the 1950s and '60s...

LONSDORF: Yeah.

BRUMFIEL: ...Often took place in Pacific island nations. Ken Buesseler's actually working with the Pacific Islands Forum, a coalition of these nations. And he told me, you know, this legacy of radioactive contamination from testing has been really traumatic for them. And, you know, they're also facing climate change now...

BARBER: Right.

BRUMFIEL: ...Which they also see is something that the rest of the world is forcing upon them. So the idea that a developed nation like Japan is just choosing to put its wastewater out into the Pacific is something that I think a lot of people in those countries are unhappy about, as well.

BARBER: So that brings me to this other question. This is just one plant that's causing all this controversy. But I can imagine this just balloons if every nation uses nuclear power. Is this waste problem why we haven't really globally adopted nuclear power?

BRUMFIEL: This is a big part of the problem, yeah. And not exactly the waste problem, although that is an issue, but the accident problem.

BARBER: Right.

BRUMFIEL: So we've had two major nuclear accidents, one at Chernobyl in Ukraine and the other one at Fukushima. These accidents are still being cleaned up decades after they've happened. The cost of that, the amount of work it takes is just so big that it kind of makes nuclear power look unprofitable from a financial perspective. And I think that liability issue really does hold back the industry. It's a massive, massive problem when these plants go wrong.

LONSDORF: But if I could just get on my preachy soapbox here...

BARBER: Yes, please.

LONSDORF: ...I do think that it is something that we all need to think about globally because a lot of climate scientists will tell you that nuclear power is kind of the key to meeting a lot of our greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. And nuclear power doesn't release greenhouse gas, as opposed to coal or oil. And so, you know, I think it really means that we all have to start thinking about, what are the risks with the energy that we choose to use? They all come with risks. And we just don't have the technology quite yet to rely solely on solar and wind, which would obviously be the best choice. So I think these are really things that we're going to have to start grappling with and we already are grappling with as we move forward.

BARBER: Right. And we have to address the fear.

BRUMFIEL: Well, I mean, you know, not without reason.

BARBER: Yeah.

BRUMFIEL: Like, you look again - Chernobyl and Fukushima. There is land people can't live on for decades, for generations. And there's good reason to be fearful of nuclear power, unfortunately.

LONSDORF: Yeah. And I will say, I was on my soapbox, but I will get off of it to say that having been to both Chernobyl and Fukushima, you know, yeah, the lasting impacts of these disasters there is pretty overwhelming. So I think it is just something that we all need to really think about as we start to calculate going forward, you know, how much energy are we going to use and where does that energy come from? And really thinking about what the risks are with every kind of energy we choose to consume.

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BARBER: Kat, Geoff, thank you so much for coming on the show and parsing all this out with us.

LONSDORF: Sure thing.

BRUMFIEL: Our pleasure.

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BARBER: Before we head out, a quick shoutout to our SHORT WAVE+ listeners. We appreciate you and thank you for being a subscriber. SHORT WAVE+ helps support our show. And if you're a regular listener, we'd love for you to join so you can enjoy the show without sponsor interruptions. Find out more at plus.npr.org/shortwave. This episode was produced and fact-checked by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by managing producer Rebecca Ramirez. And the audio engineer was Carleigh Strange. Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Anya Grundmann is our senior vice president of programming. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to SHORT WAVE from NPR.

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