Processing Incomplete

Tokyo Electric Power Company announced that it had completed processing highly contaminated water being accumulated in broken First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant on Wednesday. What kind of “complete” did they mean? It was simply a decline of contamination level of the water, and the processing was not finished at all. They need to keep on dealing with that unmanageable product from the exploded nuclear plant. It is still hard to persuade the world to convince Japan’s handling of severe nuclear accident.

Contaminated water has been produced in the process of cooling nuclear fuel rod, melted down in the accident in Fukushima. The water possessed high level radiation as much as hundreds of millions Becquerel. After processing through a multi-nuclide removal facility, or ALPS for some reason, TEPCO appealed that radiation level was lowered.

According to TEPCO’s explanation, 440 thousand out of whole 620 thousand tons of contaminated water was purified to the level of hundreds Bq. The rest of 180 thousand tons of water will be remaining after extraction of few kinds of radioactive contents such as strontium with radiation of tens of millions Bq. Whether or not its radioactive level were reduced, quantity of contaminated water to deal with would not be reduced at all.

To the plant, 300 tons of underground water is flowing in every day. It is turning to contaminated water, which needs to be stocked in the tanks. Accumulating trend of contaminated water has not been improved.

Correct expression of the situation must be “Well, we have been succeeding in reducing radiation level of the contaminated water.” Possible reason why TEPCO used “complete” was because their president promised that they would complete the processing of the water by the end of 2014, after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced to the world that the contaminated water in Fukushima had been completely under control in his speech to win Tokyo Olympic. For some people in Japan, making lie is tolerated, if it were for showing loyalty to someone.

Their disguise to the world undermines credibility of Japan. South Korea laid tighter regulation of banning import of fishery products from eight prefectures around Fukushima, because of concerns on radiation. The government of Japan stepped into the process of indicting South Korea to World Trade Organization. But it is not a smart choice of Japan. The action does not wipe the skepticism out. And if Japan loses, it will be a huge embarrassment.