IAEA’s report good for Tokyo, bad for world

Tokyo should by no means consider the so-called final safety review that the International Atomic Energy Agency submitted to the Japanese government on Tuesday as a green light given by the world to its plan to dispose of the contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

The IAEA has made several trips to Japan since early 2022 — regretfully only to dance with Tokyo at the ball the latter has staged for it — and it acknowledges that it can’t make decisions for the Japanese government. That means even though the IAEA concludes, on the basis of the water it sampled, that discharging the contaminated water into the ocean is in accordance with its safety standards and its environmental influence will be “negligible”, it is still not willing to endorse the Japanese plan, and thus passes the buck to Tokyo. The agency is well aware of its inability to identify the possible long-term environmental influences of this practice that will last decades.

The IAEA’s “it is not in the position to decide” report, which has not fully reflected the points of views of all participating parties, has only intensified the international community’s concerns. Disregarding these, Tokyo has tried to portray the IAEA report as go-ahead approval of its plan, which directly violates the London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, to which Japan is a signatory.

The verbal back-patting engaged in by visiting IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on Tuesday on the release of the report was in stark contrast with their studied silence over earlier reports of Japan’s underhand dealings with the agency in exchange for the latter to remove certain content in the report that Tokyo was unhappy with.

Interestingly, although the IAEA has been trying to avoid being seen as an endorser of Tokyo, Grossi is expected to visit the Republic of Korea, New Zealand and the Cook Islands after his visit to Japan to “ease their concerns”. That is something that should be done by Japanese officials with the IAEA report under their arms. It is not yet known whether Tokyo is reimbursing the costs of the trips. Notable by its absence from that list of destinations is China, the Pacific country with the largest population and one of the most vocal doubters of the Japanese plan.

Japan has set up special funds and subsidies to ease the opposition of its own fishers, if not compensate them for their losses. If the environmental influence of the contaminated water will really be “negligible” as the IAEA claimed in its report, these indemnity funds would not have been necessary, and Japan, a country thirsty for freshwater resources, should have every reason to make use of the water, instead of forcing it into the stomachs of the rest of the world.

The discernable exhilaration of the Kishida government on obtaining the IAEA’s “approval” is an alarming sign of it treating the endeavor as a diplomatic success rather than a scientific matter. But then Tokyo has forgone prudence and transparency and seriousness since the very beginning in its haste to be rid of the toxic water.

Editorial, China Daily