Foreign Ministers from the Pacific Islands Forum gathered in Suva, Fiji, Friday to address important regional issues in time for their scheduled Forum Leaders meeting in Tonga later this month.
Incumbent Forum Chair and Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown told Te Ao Māori news about the discussions around the disposal of Fukushima’s wastewater.
Brown said water monitoring in the region is a work in progress.
“The discussions were around building capability and capacity in the Pacific region to be able to undertake monitoring and surveillance of issues around nuclear contamination and discharge.”
He noted that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the global authority on nuclear matters are conducting the monitoring and surveillance.
“To build that capability within the Pacific means utilising our existing scientific institutions like HSBC or others to be able to have regional specific capacity to be able to do similar work.”
When questioned about whether the release of Fukushima wastewater goes against the spirit of the Rarotonga Treaty, Brown assures that it doesn’t.
“There’s no contravention in this because the water is being treated and cleaned and the isotopes are being removed before this water is discharged into the ocean.”
The matter was discussed at PALM10 last year when concerns were raised over the water release from the nuclear plant.
“Japan’s efforts in the discharge of water is meeting all the international standards and guidelines.
“We agreed to a monitoring system that is being put in place and is providing information to both Japan and to the IAEA that is conducting these monitoring and surveillance, and also to report back to Pacific countries.”
The treaty was established during the 1980s between the United States and the Soviet Union and bans the use, testing, and possession of nuclear weapons within the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (SPNFZ).
New Zealand deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters said a proposal is being finalised.
“But it’s a plan to go forward on the monitoring but notices that have been made are being referred to the Pacific Islands leaders when they meet in Tonga.”
Waipapa Taumata Rau lecturer Professor David Krofcheck says Japan made the right move in disposing of its filtered wastewater from its nuclear reactor in the Pacific Ocean.
“Fukushima businesses are going to be around for a very long time. All right, their nuclear reactor melts down. And they did the right thing at the time back in 2011.
“They dumped seawater onto the reactor to keep it from further destroying what they have there. It could have been much worse.”
He said the radionucleotides had been filtered and were well below World Health Organisation limits and what was left behind is a type of hydrogen called tritium.
“There’s hydrogen in the water anyway and so I think that the ocean is probably a natural place to store excess tritium because tritium is naturally found in the ocean anyway.”
“That’s everybody’s backyard and you’ve got to pay attention to your own backyard. So I’m glad that at least from the PALM10 meeting that Japan seems to have bent over a little bit.”
He said Japan suggested it could provide technical assistance and training to the Pacific Islands so they can make measurements on their own.
Krofcheck said the Pacific Island nations were rightfully nervous about the wastewater because of the history of atomic weapons testing dating back to the 1950s.
“That is, I think, a bigger problem than Fukushima because all those nuclear fission products from those weapons caused a lot of illnesses in Pacific Island nations and French Polynesia and the Marshall Islands.
“And I think that is the real issue that is even much more relevant to the population than the First Nation populations today in the Pacific islands,” he said.
