Seoul, South Korea – Lee Dong-ho, 73, has been fishing for 40 years off the southern coast of South Korea, near Japan, and his eldest son is now taking over the family business, their engine.
Lee raises snapper and yellowtail, mackerel and anchovy, and operates a drying and processing plant.
“We are surrounded on three sides by the sea,” Lee, who lives in the village of Dadae on Geoje Island, told Al Jazeera.
South Korea has transformed its fishing industry over the past 30 years amid criticism of overfishing. Lee represents a positive change as most of his business is in marine fish farming – as opposed to open-water catching – which now accounts for more than half of South Korea’s national seafood production.
But now the $ 9 billion a year industry faces a new challenge.
Last month, Japan announced that it planned to release more than one million tonnes of wastewater from the Fukushima disaster in the Pacific Ocean.
“When the contaminated water in Fukushima is discharged, people will avoid seafood and fishermen will lose their jobs,” Lee said.
Fishing groups in South Korea have been among the most vocal opponents of the controversial plan with flotillas of ships setting out to fly flags of protest.
“Our industry is poised to suffer annihilating damage, just with people’s concerns about possible radioactive contamination of marine products,” a coalition of 25 fishing organizations said, in a written protest at the Japanese embassy in the month. latest.
The Japanese government announced its plan for water – used to cool Fukushima reactors since the destruction of the power plant in the 2011 tsunami – on April 13, sparking objections from China and South Korea and weeks of protests in Seoul.
Activists practically camped outside the Japanese embassy, with dozens of different groups demanding the Tokyo reverse course, invoking environmental Armageddon, presenting petitions and, in the case of some students, shaving their heads.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in the last year of his five-year term, with approval ratings at its lowest after his party’s recent electoral defeat, has spoken out strongly against the decision to Tokyo, calling on officials to examine legal means to block Japan. wastewater discharge.
But beyond the political machinations that characterized the reaction in the region, fishing communities in the southern regions of South Korea are among those most concerned about the plan’s potential effect on their livelihoods.
The governors of Jeju Island and Gyeongsang province and the mayors of Busan and other towns and villages are among those calling on Japan to abandon its plan and the South Korean national government to act with it. more urgency.
“The ocean is an important resource not only for tourism in the Geoje region, but also for an ecosystem that secures the life of Korean fishermen,” Geoje Island Mayor Byun Kwang-yong said in Al Jazeera.
Japan insists that the water, which has been treated to remove harmful radioactive substances, is safe and plans to start discharging it in two years.
Estimates suggest it will take at least a year for the sewage to reach South Korea’s fishing grounds, but some say it could take less than 200 days from the date of the release, the report said. Yonhap news agency.
“It will eventually flow into South Korea and into the seas around Geoje Island,” Byun said.
Manage wastewater
When the tsunami hit the Fukushima-Daiichi power station, three of its six reactors melted, in the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
Molten nuclear material must be continuously cooled by ocean and rainwater, otherwise it will overheat and explode, but during the cooling process, the water becomes contaminated with harmful radionuclides and becomes radioactive.
The fishing industry in Japan has also expressed concern about the effects of the Fukushima disaster. [File: Kyodo/via Reuters]
Equivalent to approximately 500 Olympic swimming pools The water is currently stored in tanks around the plant and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO, the company that runs the plant, says it is running out of space.
He has long argued that the best way to manage water was to slowly release it into the Pacific Ocean over a 30-year period – the plan announced by the Japanese government. To remove harmful radioactive substances from the water, TEPCO has treated it, using the advanced liquid treatment system, ALPS.
TEPCO admitted in 2018 that the ALPS system had failed to properly clean water from dangerous carcinogenic radionuclides, and environmentalists say the planned release, given its magnitude, carries huge and unprecedented risks that require attention. further study.
“How it affects the food chain, how it affects human health, it is not at all clear,” Marcos Orellana, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of management and management. environmentally sound disposal of hazardous substances and wastes and a professor of international environmental law, told Al Jazeera.
Japan said the discharge process will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, which approved the Tokyo plan.
But few see the IAEA as the “neutral technical body” that it claims to be.
Wastewater – equivalent to around 500 Olympic-size swim soundings is currently stored in containers around the Fukushima site [File: Kyodo/via Reuters]
“The IAEA has a mandate to accelerate and expand peaceful atomic energy,” said Orellana, skeptical of the agency’s speed of support for the plan.
“Why is the IAEA, on the very day that Japan announced its decision to reject the contaminated water … did it speak out publicly in support of Japan?” He asked.
Environmental law
Before the development of modern international environmental law, “the seas were seen as a dumping ground, like a garbage can,” said Orellana.
The discharge of wastewater from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean would violate international law, according to Orellana and other experts.
The 1972 London Convention and the 2006 Follow-up Protocol, to which Japan is a signatory, aim to “prevent pollution of the marine environment caused by dumping at sea”.
“The London Convention on Dumping considers the dumping of radioactive substances prohibited,” Orellana said.
South Korea’s spokesman said President Moon had suggested Seoul could take the matter to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, but political considerations were involved.
The United States has spoken in favor of the Tokyo plan, as long as surveillance is provided by the IAE, and Seoul fears offending Washington as it seeks the Biden administration’s help in consolidating the peace with North Korea and in its battle against COVID. -19.
Critics of the Japanese plan argue they could simply get more land nearby to store water until a safe-level cleaning process can be used.
A fisherman repairs his net in a small port on Geoje Island, southeast of Seoul. Community worried about effect of Fukushima wastewater discharged into the sea [File: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]
It is also suggested that alternatives are not sought after for one simple reason: money.
According to Greenpeace, the most hazardous substances in water, strontium and carbon-14 – with half-lives of 30 and 5,730 years – will remain in the wastewater even after treatment with ALPS.
The environmental group also points to tritium, which is even more difficult to remove from water but less understood in terms of an environmental threat because it binds to ocean vegetation and can then enter the food chain more easily, according to its report. : Stemming the 2020 Tide: The Reality of the Fukushima Radioactive Water Crisis.
Report author Shaun Burnie argues that ALPS treatment and ocean discharge were chosen from more viable alternatives because they cost less and give the impression that the problem is managed.
“The alternatives are expensive, but the cost of contaminating the Pacific Ocean for hundreds of years with radioactive substances is even higher,” Orellana said.
