HANKYOREH

APLN member Tatsujiro Suzuki was interviewed by The Hankyoreh. He discussed the release of contaminated water from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and explored what actions the Japanese government can take to regain the public’s trust.

The IAEA’s monitoring and internal reports certainly help, but they did not evaluate the release in the context of its continuing for the next 30 to 40 years. They simply evaluated a water sample provided by TEPCO under parameters dictated by the Japanese government. Regarding an IAEA report that declared that the “treated water would have a negligible radiological impact to people and the environment,” Rafael Grossi, director general of the IAEA, stressed that the report did not recommend or support the Japanese government’s policy in any way. The IAEA Safety Standards Series No. GSG-8, Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment, states: “For planned exposure situations, justification is the process of determining whether a practice is, overall, beneficial, i.e. whether the expected benefits to individuals and to society from introducing or continuing the practice outweigh the harm (including radiation detriment) resulting from the practice.”

Yet neither the IAEA nor the Japanese government conducted a thorough evaluation of the potential harms and benefits of the release. That is why we need an independent entity.

The original article can be accessed here.