tokyo.- Every day at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, officials dump more than 100 tons of water through its corroded reactors to keep them cool after the calamitous 2011 meltdown. The highly radioactive water is then pumped into hundreds of white and blue storage tanks that form a labyrinthine matrix around the plant.
For the past decade, that’s where the water has stayed. But with more than 1.3 million tons in the tanks, Japan is running out of space. So next year, in the spring, it plans to start releasing the water into the Pacific after treating most of the radioactive particles, as has been done elsewhere.
The Japanese government, saying that there is no feasible alternative, promised to carry out the release paying special attention to security regulations. The plan has been endorsed by the United Nations nuclear watchdog.
But the approach is increasingly alarming Japan’s neighbors. Those in the South Pacific, who have suffered for decades from a US nuclear test in the Marshall Islands, are particularly skeptical of the security promises. Last month, a group representing more than a dozen Pacific countries, including Australia and the Marshall Islands, urged Tokyo to defer sewage discharges.
Now Japan is prepared to press on even as it risks alienating a region it has tried to cultivate in recent years.
Nuclear tests in the Pacific “were shrouded in this veil of lies,” said Bedi Racule, an anti-nuclear activist from the Marshall Islands. “The trust really isn’t there.”
Much of that mistrust is rooted in the most unlikely events. In 1954, snow fell on the tropical Rongelap Atoll. Residents of the reef, in the Marshall Islands, had never seen anything like it. The children played in it; some ate it. Two days later, US soldiers arrived to tell them that the “snow” was actually radioactive fallout from America’s largest nuclear test, which took place on nearby Bikini Atoll and irradiated Rongelap after an unexpected change in direction. of the wind.
After the test, hundreds of people suffered intense radiation exposure, leading to skin burns and pregnancy complications. Decades later, the people of the Marshall Islands are still feeling its impact through forced relocations, loss of land, and rising cancer rates. “You feel this deep pain,” Mrs. Racule said. “Why weren’t we good enough to be treated as human beings?”
The people of the Marshall Islands were not the only ones affected. Twenty-three Japanese fishermen were sailing near Rongelap at the time. All suffered intense radiation sickness, and one died six months later as a result.
His exposure led to Japan’s first major anti-nuclear protests.
“The whole anti-nuclear movement here in Japan grew out of the huge mass public actions after the Bikini Atoll tests,” said Meri Joyce, an anti-nuclear organizer for the Japanese activist group Peace Boat.
When asked about the concerns of Pacific nations, a representative of Japan’s Foreign Ministry said that as the only country to experience atomic bombing in the war and given its connection to the 1954 test, Japan sympathized with your fears about radiation exposure.
That shared history and experience of nuclear exposure has contributed to a sense of betrayal among some Pacific activists. “Our Japanese friends and partners in the nuclear movement have been fighting really hard,” Racule said. “It feels like a huge injustice.”
In a statement last year, Youngsolwara Pacific, a leading environmental advocacy group, asked: “How can the Japanese government, which has experienced the same brutal experiences with nuclear weapons in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, want to pollute still more our Pacific with nuclear waste? For us, this irresponsible act of cross-border harm is the same as waging nuclear war against us as the peoples of the Pacific and our islands.”
