SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean opposition lawmakers have sharply criticized the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog for his endorsement of Japanese plans to release treated sewage from the damaged nuclear power plant of Fukushima during a tense meeting in Seoul on Sunday, with protesters shouting outside the door.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in South Korea over the weekend to engage with government officials and critics and help reduce public concerns about food safety. The planned discharge of treated wastewater from the Fukushima plant has become a major political issue in South Korea after the IAEA last week approved Japanese discharge plans, saying the process would meet international safety standards and would have negligible environmental and health impacts.
The South Korean government also approved the safety of the Japanese plans, saying contamination levels in the water pumped from the plant would be within acceptable standards and would not significantly affect South Korean seas as long as the plant treatment systems would operate as planned.
When meeting with visiting members of the Liberal Democratic Party, which controls the majority in South Korea’s parliament, Grossi said the IAEA’s review of Japanese plans was based on ‘transparent’ and ‘scientific’ research. . He acknowledged concerns about how the Japanese plans would play out in reality and said the IAEA would establish a permanent office in Fukushima to closely monitor how the dumping process is being implemented over the next three years. next decades.
Lawmakers reacted by harshly criticizing the IAEA review, which they say overlooked the long-term environmental and health impacts of the sewage discharge and threatens to set a bad precedent that could encourage other countries to dump nuclear waste at sea. They called on Japan to abandon dumping plans and work with neighboring countries to find safer ways to manage the waste water, including possible continuation of long-term storage on land .
The party also criticized South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s government for putting people’s health at risk while trying to improve relations with Japan.
“If you think (treated sewage) is safe, I wonder if you would be willing to suggest to the Japanese government to use this water for drinking or for industrial and agricultural purposes, rather than dumping it into the sea. “Woo Won-shik, a Democratic Party lawmaker who attended the meeting, told Grossi. The party said Woo had been on a hunger strike for the past 14 days to protest the Japanese release plans.
Further details of the meeting were not immediately available after reporters were asked to leave after opening statements. Dozens of protesters shouted in a nearby room while holding signs denouncing the IAEA and Japan, and they were closely watched by parliamentary security personnel.
Hundreds of protesters also marched through downtown Seoul on Saturday to demand that Japan drop its landfill plans. The protests provided a tense backdrop to a meeting between Grossi and South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, who called for “active cooperation” from the IAEA to reassure the South Korean public.
The safety of Fukushima’s sewage has been a sensitive issue for years among US allies. South Korea and Japan have worked in recent months to mend relations long strained by historic wartime grievances to address shared concerns such as the North Korean nuclear threat and China’s assertive foreign policy.
South Korea’s assessment of the safety of the rejection plan was partly based on observations by a team of government scientists who were allowed to visit the Fukushima plant in May. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed to the visit during a May 7 summit with Yoon in Seoul, in a show of his desire to improve relations.
In a statement released by state media on Sunday, North Korea also criticized the Japanese release plans, warning of “the fatal negative impact on human life, safety and the ecological environment ‘resulting from the release’. of water polluted by nuclear power”. The statement, which was attributed to an unidentified official from North Korea’s Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection, also criticized Washington and Seoul for backing the Japanese plans.
“What matters is the unreasonable behavior of the IAEA actively supporting and facilitating Japan’s projected discharge of nuclear polluted water, which is unimaginable,” he said. “Worse still, the United States and (South) Korea are openly expressing an unseemly ‘welcome’ to Japan’s discharge plan which deserves condemnation and rejection, sparking strong public anger.”
A massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed the cooling systems at the Fukushima power plant, causing three reactors to melt and releasing large amounts of radiation.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which operates the facility, stored treated water in hundreds of tanks that now cover most of the plant and are nearly full. Japanese officials say the tanks must be removed to make way for the construction of facilities for dismantling the plant and to minimize the risk of leaks in the event of another major disaster. The tanks are expected to reach their capacity of 1.37 million tonnes in early 2024.
Japan first announced plans to release the treated water into the sea in 2018, saying the water will be further diluted by seawater before being released in a carefully controlled process that will take decades.