Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bunjelung Calcotin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate
Speaker 1: island and nations. We pay our respects to the first
Speaker 1: peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Good morning, and welcome to the Daily os It's Monday,
Speaker 2: the twenty eighth of August. I'm Sam Kraslowski.
Speaker 3: I'm Zara Seidler.
Speaker 2: The controversial release of treated radioactive water from the Fukashima
Speaker 2: Nuclear power plant in Japan has just begun. Japan is
Speaker 2: releasing water contaminated during the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the ocean.
Speaker 2: The UN's nuclear monitoring body has signed off on the
Speaker 2: plan and Japan insists it's safe, but not everyone is convinced.
Speaker 1: There is white bear public opposition to the move in
Speaker 1: neighboring China and South Korea, and China has already reacted
Speaker 1: by banning all seafood imported from the country of Japan.
Speaker 3: Tda's brilliant deputy editor, Emma Gillespie is going to explain
Speaker 3: exactly what is being released into the ocean and whether
Speaker 3: or not it's safe the first sam what's making headlines
Speaker 3: this morning.
Speaker 2: Three US Marines have been killed and five hospitalized after
Speaker 2: their military aircraft crashed on Melville Island, part of the
Speaker 2: Tiwi Islands, yesterday. Twenty three people, all US personnel, were
Speaker 2: on board the plane when it crashed on the island,
Speaker 2: which is sixty kilometers off the coast from Darwin, during
Speaker 2: a training exercise.
Speaker 3: A twelve year old girl has been taken to hospital
Speaker 3: following a stabbing at an Adelaide school. The student suffered
Speaker 3: non life threatening injuries after she was stabbed in the torso.
Speaker 3: On Friday, A twelve year old boy was arrested and
Speaker 3: will face court in October on an assault charge.
Speaker 2: The largest study into the effects of salt on heart
Speaker 2: health has revealed that cutting salt from one's diet you
Speaker 2: can reduce the risk of heart issues and strokes by
Speaker 2: almost twenty percent. Researchers also found that those who never
Speaker 2: add additional salt to their food were eighteen percent less
Speaker 2: likely to develop atrial fibrillation, which is the irregular heart
Speaker 2: rhythms that can lead to heart failure than those who do.
Speaker 2: Add a pinch of.
Speaker 3: Salt and the good news. Lego will start selling bricks
Speaker 3: coated with braille to help vision impaired children play Braille.
Speaker 3: Bricks had previously been distributed for free to some learning organizations,
Speaker 3: will now be available for purchase in English and French
Speaker 3: languages from Friday.
Speaker 2: Emma, welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: So Japan has begun releasing treated radioactive water from the
Speaker 2: Fukushima Nuclear power Plant into the Pacific Ocean. There's a
Speaker 2: lot to unpack here. Why don't we start at the
Speaker 2: very beginning. Tell me how Japan ended up with this
Speaker 2: radioactive water, something you're not meant to have to begin with.
Speaker 4: This goes way back to March two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 4: when a massive earthquake off Japan's northeast coast triggered a tsunami.
Speaker 2: I remember that earthquake.
Speaker 4: It was huge, It devastated parts of Japan, and this huge,
Speaker 4: super fast wave just smashed into the coast thirty minutes
Speaker 4: after this earthquake, there was very little time to prepare
Speaker 4: and it hit this power plant, the Fukushima Nuclear Plant,
Speaker 4: which knocked out the power supply to the plant and
Speaker 4: triggered a chain reaction which caused three reactor cause to
Speaker 4: melt down.
Speaker 5: Nuclear officials there a warning of a possible nuclear reactor meltdown.
Speaker 5: They are still cooling three reactors at the site using seawater,
Speaker 5: but today they admitted the number two reactor at one
Speaker 5: point was dry the overheating fuel rods completely exposed.
Speaker 4: So these three reactor CAUs were melting down and water
Speaker 4: had to be used to cool those reactors down. Now
Speaker 4: that water became highly radioactive, So over the course of
Speaker 4: a few weeks, all this additional water was used to
Speaker 4: cool the reactors down, and that contaminated water was then
Speaker 4: treated and stored in tanks. Lots of water, lots of tanks.
Speaker 4: On top of that, we had contaminations spilling out from
Speaker 4: the plant into nearby waterways that also needed to be
Speaker 4: pumped back out and stored. So the process of cooling
Speaker 4: those reactors is still ongoing, meaning more and more water
Speaker 4: continues to be contaminated, more and more water to be stored.
Speaker 2: Twelve or thirteen years later, Yes.
Speaker 4: So what happened. Fukushima was declared one of the worst
Speaker 4: nuclear disasters in history and clearly, all these years on,
Speaker 4: we're still talking about it. The impact is still being felt.
Speaker 2: What do you mean when you say a lot of water?
Speaker 4: We're talking about five hundred Olympic sized swimming pool's worth
Speaker 4: of contaminated water that Japan's been storing in tanks ever
Speaker 4: since twenty eleven. There's some visuals of these tanks. It's
Speaker 4: you can hardly comprehend how much water they're storing.
Speaker 2: So the water is still there at the plan. What's
Speaker 2: happened in the decade plus since then?
Speaker 4: So the Fukushima plant is now a decommissioning project. That
Speaker 4: means that it's being shut down. But we're talking about
Speaker 4: nuclear power, so that has to be a gradual process,
Speaker 4: and they reckon it's going to take around a generation
Speaker 4: to complete this task, and so part of that decommissioning,
Speaker 4: part of that project is dealing with this enormous amount
Speaker 4: of nuclear wastewater. But the problem is there are only
Speaker 4: so many tanks that we can store wastewater in and
Speaker 4: they're due to reach full capacity at the plant very soon,
Speaker 4: so they have to figure out what to do with
Speaker 4: the more than one point two million tons spread across
Speaker 4: one thousand tanks sitting there at this plant. So the
Speaker 4: news now is that, following a consultation period, they've now
Speaker 4: begun releasing a treated version of this contaminated water into
Speaker 4: the ocean.
Speaker 2: And I imagine that's not great, right, Well.
Speaker 4: It's only divided international communities and Japan's neighbors. And to
Speaker 4: understand the risk of releasing this wastewater, the risk it
Speaker 4: might have on the ocean, the animals that live in
Speaker 4: the ocean, and those of us who consume food from
Speaker 4: the ocean or drink water, it's important to consider what
Speaker 4: happened in the years after the disaster. So after that
Speaker 4: nuclear meltdown in the tsunami, large amounts of radioactive materials
Speaker 4: were released into the Pacific Ocean, and in twenty eleven,
Speaker 4: seawater sites recorded really high levels of lingering radioactive substances.
Speaker 4: Many were concerned about what the potential impact of that
Speaker 4: long term was on marine life. Since then, the World
Speaker 4: Health Organization have conducted studies that thankfully show us that
Speaker 4: there actually hasn't been a significant level of cancer and
Speaker 4: radioactive impact on wildlife, certainly not as much as was predicted,
Speaker 4: and not at all to the levels of precursors that
Speaker 4: we look to like Noble, a disaster which saw immediate deaths.
Speaker 2: So should we then be worried for marine life? Is
Speaker 2: it safe to put it?
Speaker 4: Simply? The UN says it's safe. So the United Nations
Speaker 4: has endorsed Japan's plans to pump the additional million plus
Speaker 4: tons of treated radioactive wastewater back into the ocean. The
Speaker 4: UN basically said it deems the risk of that water
Speaker 4: to be low. But this is a controversial plan and
Speaker 4: it has attracted a lot of attention and concern.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by treating water?
Speaker 4: So this is a process of basically cleaning the contaminated
Speaker 4: water to remove most of the problematic contaminants. But there
Speaker 4: is still one radioactive contaminant that does remain, and it's
Speaker 4: called tritium. It's something that can't really be removed by
Speaker 4: modern technology. But there are international standards for how much
Speaker 4: tritium is safe to release into the water. Japanese authorities
Speaker 4: have chosen a concentration of tritium seven times smaller than
Speaker 4: the World Health Organization's recommendation for water that you can
Speaker 4: drink for tritium levels in drinking water that is safe
Speaker 4: to consume, So seven times under that number and The
Speaker 4: International Atomic Energy Agency says it will be monitoring the
Speaker 4: release process, and they claim the water will have a
Speaker 4: negligible radiological impact to people and the environment.
Speaker 2: So the UN's given the tick. The Japanese government's obviously
Speaker 2: in favor of it because it's their initiative. What's the
Speaker 2: opposition been to the plan?
Speaker 4: So Japan's fisheries unions have really been opposed to the
Speaker 4: release of this wastewater. They've said that even if treated,
Speaker 4: that the water will have a catastrophic impact on the
Speaker 4: fishing industry. We know that Japan's fishing industry.
Speaker 2: Is enormous, world renowned.
Speaker 4: Exactly, China has already announced an immediate blank at ban
Speaker 4: on importing seafood from Japan, so there'll be huge economic
Speaker 4: impacts there. A Chinese official has also been quoted in
Speaker 4: Chinese state run media calling Japan's decision selfish and irresponsible.
Speaker 4: But Japan has pointed out that China fairly has discharged
Speaker 4: its own water from nuclear plants with much higher levels
Speaker 4: of tritium than Japan's currently proposing. The BBC says that
Speaker 4: they verified that, so there could be a bit of
Speaker 4: politic and going on there. But the response to this
Speaker 4: extends well beyond Japan and China. The response has been international.
Speaker 4: Thousands of people have protested this decision, including in Korea
Speaker 4: in Seoul, where they're calling for government action, people taking
Speaker 4: to the streets there. But interestingly enough, the South Korean
Speaker 4: government has actually endorsed this plan themselves. There are also
Speaker 4: researchers who criticize the plants, saying that if the water
Speaker 4: was left in storage for one hundred and twenty years
Speaker 4: over that period of time, the tritium would diminish significantly,
Speaker 4: and that would of course lower the risk significantly. But
Speaker 4: proponents of the current plans say storing contaminated water for
Speaker 4: that long is just unrealistic and increases the risk of
Speaker 4: accidents storing that water, of course, things can go wrong,
Speaker 4: Humans can come into contact with that contaminated water, and
Speaker 4: then you know, we deal with a whole other set
Speaker 4: of potential disasters.
Speaker 2: Why do you think this story has grabbed you?
Speaker 4: I think this story has captivated so many of us
Speaker 4: because it's just unlike anything we see in the headlines.
Speaker 4: You know, we deal with the constant expected news stories
Speaker 4: of cost of living, crisis politics, but this is just
Speaker 4: a weird one. If I can be so blunt, like,
Speaker 4: whoever thought we would be talking about a tsunami from
Speaker 4: twenty eleven impacting the safety of a fishing economy of
Speaker 4: drinking water and causing such division between countries and advocacy
Speaker 4: groups and the science community. Yeah, it's a really interesting
Speaker 4: one and we'll certainly be keeping an eye on what
Speaker 4: comes from here.
Speaker 2: It'll be really interesting to see if there's those economic
Speaker 2: impacts to Japan's fishing industry plays out and what that
Speaker 2: actually looks like. Thanks for joining us on the Daily AuSIM.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: And thank you for listening to us this morning. If
Speaker 2: you have a question that you'd like us to explore
Speaker 2: this week, all some comments on today's episode, we'd love
Speaker 2: to see your feedback. You can leave it in a
Speaker 2: little question box at the bottom of your Spotify page.
Speaker 2: We'll be back again tomorrow. Until then, have a great
Speaker 2: start to the week.