Pouring Contaminated Water

Tokyo Electric Power Company started running contaminated water, after getting through purification process, into Pacific Ocean from broken First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant on Monday. While contaminated materials had been flowing out with uncontrollable underground stream around the plant, TEPCO for the first time began to pour contaminated water, knowing it would not be completely purified. It is hard to understand that the world ignores this unprecedented type of water pollution.

TEPCO calls it “sub-drain project.” The plant has been equipped with a number of wells, called sub-drain, for controlling underground water approaching to the building. New plan was to draw water from sub-drain and pouring it to the sea after removing radioactive materials. If it were successful, TEPCO expects that it can reduce underground stream getting into the plant, mostly three hundred metric tons, by half.

The company has, however, been failing in controlling underground water. TEPCO once started bypassing underground water before it came around the plant last year. But, it turned to be unable to reduce the water flowing into the plant. Experts of TEPCO could not understand how underground water was coming through. As its result, seven hundred thousand metric tons of contaminated water is contained in one thousand tanks built around the plant.

So, next measure was to draw the water from underground right beneath the plant. TEPCO and third party supervisors would measure radioactive level of the water and announce it before flowing to the sea. Although that water would be going through purification system, called ALPS, it is already known that tritium would not be removed. There will be hundreds of thousands becquerels of tritium remaining in one litter of “purified” water.

The most worried are fishermen working around the plant. Although they were strongly against the project, they finally agreed on it, believing a story presented by TEPCO that the water would be completely blocked with new system. But, the fishery around the plant has been fatally damaged with unprecedented level of nuclear accident in the plant. There is no guarantee for them that it will turn to a normal.

The point is whether a power company can control great eco system with artificial equipments invented with various ideas stemming from one purpose of rebuilding nuclear business. A story to block vast underground water by ice wall built in the land with depth of only tens of meters sounds like myth or religion. The world is too busy in discussing serious problem of Syrian refugees to notice unfairness of pouring nuclear materials into Pacific Ocean.