Fears of 'real-life Godzilla' as Japan dumps waste from Fukushima plant into sea
There are fears Japan could create a "real-life Godzilla" from the radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, it has been warned.
It comes as Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has started pumping water containing radioactive tritium into the Pacific Ocean. While the Japanese government has insisted the water discharge is completely safe, it has sparked a furious backlash from China and South Korea as well as the fishing communities.
Assessments from foreign experts and the International Atomic Energy Agency have ruled that will cause a negligible impact on the environment and human health, but this hasn't stopped protesters from demanding this stop.
The famous radioactive monster first appeared on Japanese cinema screens in 1954 (No Name)Currently, there are plans to discharge more than 1 million tonnes of polluted water in a scheme expected to take 30 or 40 years. In retaliation, China has banned Japanese seafood and called its neighbour "extremely selfish and irresponsible".
The Global Times, the flagship paper of The Chinese Communist Party, warned Japan could open a "Pandora's box" and spark fears of a "real-life Godzilla", which is the gigantic radioactive lizard that first appeared in Japanese cinema in 1954.
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Professor Timothy Mousseau, who has been researching the effects of the nuclear disaster for 12 years, said scientists couldn't rule out worrying mutations in animals if the plans to dump the under-researched radioactive chemical continue.
Prof Mousseau told The Daily Star: "Tritium is radioactive hydrogen. It's combined with what oxygen to form radioactive water," Mousseau told us. In the laboratory, with much higher levels of tritium, we see genetic damage, we see effects on reproduction, we see effects on development, and we see effects on longevity.
"And so there's certainly the potential for all of these negative effects, including genetic mutations. What that means, and what the long-term impacts will be, we have no idea. But the potential is there."
China’s foreign ministry has released a statement saying: “The ocean is the common property of all humanity, and forcibly starting the discharge of Fukushima's nuclear wastewater into the ocean is an extremely selfish and irresponsible act that ignores international public interests.”
The South Korean government has said it has no scientific problems with the release of the wastewater but urged transparency in the coming decades while the project is ongoing. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said: “What's important now is whether Japan, as it promised to the international community, strictly follows the scientific standards and transparently provides information.”
The water became radioactive after it was used to cool three nuclear reactors that melted down at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station after it was struck by a powerful tsunami and earthquake in 2011. Millions of litres of water were stored in vast bags at the site and in 2013 the Japanese government began using the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) to filter out the most harmful substances.
The ALPS process successfully removed almost all of the dangerous elements in the water but tritium - which is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen - is very difficult and costly to remove from the water. The levels of radiation given off by tritium are relatively low and water containing the element is frequently released into the world's oceans by nuclear power stations around the globe, including in the UK.
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