Japan is going to discharge nuclear wastewater. Can we still eat salmon?

Japan is going to discharge nuclear wastewater. Salmon can be eaten, but pay attention to the place of origin.

According to a recent Japanese national television news report, the Japanese government will convene a meeting of relevant cabinet ministers to discuss plans to release treated and diluted water from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean. They aim to start water releases by Thursday, arguing domestic and international understanding of the plan has deepened. The meeting will include Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Minister of Industry and Economy Yasutoshi Nishimura, Minister of Reconstruction Yumichi Watanabe and others.

A recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Japan's plans are consistent with international safety standards. Based on the report, the Japanese government has been sharing planning information with the fishing community at home and abroad, while also deciding on the timing of wastewater discharges.

The water used to cool the molten fuel is mixed with rainwater and groundwater. Although the treated accumulated water has most of the radioactivity removed, it still contains tritium. To address safety concerns, the Japanese government plans to dilute the treated water to reduce tritium levels to about one-seventh of the World Health Organization's drinking water quality guidelines before releasing it into the sea.

What is tritium? Why focus on it?

According to the "Drinking Water Quality Guidelines" released by the World Health Organization in 2017, the guideline concentration level of tritium is 10,000 Bq/L. You may not be familiar with the unit Bq/L. Becquerel (Bq) is the international unit of radioactive activity, which refers to how many nuclei decay per second. Therefore, Bq/L represents the radioactive activity per liter of water. degrees, that is, how many nuclei decay per second per liter of water.

The radioactivity of the substance. The greater the activity, the stronger the radioactivity. 10,000 Bq/L means that the WHO recommends that there should be no more than 10,000 decaying tritium atoms per second per liter of drinking water.

Unfortunately, currently we have no conventional means to specifically remove tritium from water, because it is water itself, and the reverse osmosis membrane treatment technology used for high-end water treatment does not work in principle. The superheavy water formed will be evenly distributed in the ordinary aqueous solution system, and we cannot perform macroscopic treatment such as precipitation on it.

Japan’s measure is to use dilution facilities to reduce the tritium concentration in the original wastewater to about one-seventh of the WHO’s drinking water health guidelines, and then discharge it into the ocean. We cannot think of this as a way to take off your pants and fart. Correspondingly, we can think of it as a means of risk diversification. Of course, all earthlings and natural people here are all risk holders.

The treatment effect of different water treatment methods on radionuclides

We all know that fishery is an important industry in Japan. Kishida Fumio met with senior officials from the National Fisheries Cooperation Association on Monday to discuss the final stages of setting a start date. He emphasized the government's commitment to security and preventing harmful rumors, even if the process takes decades. In the face of opposition from Japan's local fishing community, the Japanese government intends to set up a forum for continued discussions and provide support to the fishing community, emphasizing the importance of continuous communication.

So we will continue to see Japanese people from all walks of life publicize and maintain the reputation of their fisheries in the next few decades. The efforts made by the Japanese government and the fishing industry to maintain the industry in the next few decades deserve continued attention.

So can we still eat salmon? This actually depends on the source of the salmon we have access to daily.

In 2022, the global supply of farmed Atlanta salmon will be 2.8637 million tons, of which Norway contributed 1.5111 million tons, while Chile produced approximately 700,000 tons. The supply of these two countries accounted for Globally 77.2. In recent years, China has transformed from a net exporter of seafood to a net importer, which has directly led to Norway becoming the world's largest salmon exporter.

Japan is an important market for salmon consumption, but it is not a major export producing area. Japan’s wild salmon fishing may indeed have a certain importance, but the chance of this kind of wild salmon entering the homes of ordinary people is not high.

We can also recall that there was a time when the salmon in supermarkets used the slogan "Imported from Japan"? Therefore, there are a lot of concerns about salmon consumption on the Internet. At present, there seems to be no solid information, but it may be more of an echo from the perspective of media propaganda.