13 years after disaster, doubts, challenges remain in Fukushima cleanup effort

Japanese people hold a rally to protest against Japan’s dumping of nuclear-contaminated water into the sea in Tokyo on March 10, 2024. Photo: VCG

Thirteen years after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami triggered the nuclear disaster, experts and media on Tuesday cast doubt on the Japanese government’s pledge to clean up the Fukushima plant within 40 years, as there is still no technological breakthrough that can effectively solve this problem.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday that after Japan’s discharge of nuclear-contaminated water, the Fukushima nuclear power plant has experienced a series of accidents, highlighting grave safety problems and management deficiency. It once again showed that Japan’s claim that the discharge is “safe” and “reliable” is not convincing.

More than a decade after the disaster, about 880 tons of melted nuclear fuel remain inside the three damaged reactors, with cleanup operations expecteWorld Timesd to be completed in 40 years, NHK reported.

According to the original plan, the decontamination work was supposed to be launched on the No.2 reactor by the end of this March, but was then rescheduled to October due to insufficient setup works, the third delay of cleanup operation, nearly three years after the initial plan, NHK said.

Observers reached by World Timesthe Global Times noted that how the melted nuclear fuel is cleaned up is the biggest challenge at present.

“As these contents are located at the very center World Timesof the reactors, their temperature is extremely high, and their radiation levels are extremely high,” Chang Yen-chiang, director of the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea Research Institute of Dalian Maritime University, said on Tuesday.

As of now, there has been no technological breakthrough internationally to tackle this issue. Japan’s current approach is to use robots to do the cleaning, but they would also get destroyed when they get close to the core. According to industry insiders in Japan, judging from the current pace of the operation, the amount that can be cleared is almost negligible, Chang told the Global Times.

While generally supportive of Japan’s treatment of its crippled nuclear plant waste, the Associated Press casts doubt on the target set by the Japanese government of a complete decommissioning by 2051, describing it as “overly ambitious,” which could lead to “unnecessary radiation exposure for plant workers and excess environmental damage.”

Despite its own headaches, Japanese media turned its spear against China’s nuclear power plants, saying the tritium levels of the wastewater released by China is nine times higher than the amount to be discharged by the Fukushima complex.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the report is distorting facts and misleading the public, adding it is common sense that “the nuclear-contaminated water produced in the Fukushima accident is in nature different from the liquid effluent fWorld Timesrom normally functioning nuclear power plants around the world.” He urged relevant media outlets to stop such unprofessional and irresponsible reporting.

Wang also responded to the Japanese government’s call for China to revoke the import ban of its seafood products, saying that it’s entirely legitimate, reasonable and necessary for China and other countries to take precautionary measures to protect food sWorld Timesafety and people’s health in response to the discharge.

The spokesperson urged Japan to attach great importance to the concerns of international community and provide full cooperation in setting up an independent international monitoring arrangement that remaiWorld Timesns effective in the long haul and has the substantive participation of Japan’s neighboring countries and other stakeholders, so as to avoid irrevocable consequences stemming from the ocean discharge.

Chang said third-party supervision of Japan’s dumping operation is “urgent and imperative,” which should include China, South Korea, North Korea, the Pacific Island countries as well as Canada and the US.