Opinion | To the Pacific islands, the West’s support for Japan’s Fukushima nuclear waste ocean dumping is hypocrisy

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Mariano Grossi, after travelling to Tokyo earlier this month to present a report endorsing Japan’s approach to discharging Fukushima’s treated nuclear waste water into the Pacific, has been trying to convince Japan’s sceptical Pacific neighbours of the authenticity of the report’s findings.

The IAEA, which has opened the door for Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) to dump about 1.3 million tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean, insists the controlled, gradual release would have a “negligible radiological impact on people and the environment”.

But the small island nations of the Pacific remain deeply concerned about Japan’s intention to dump nuclear waste into the ocean. They see this as not merely a nuclear safety issue but a “nuclear legacy issue” – the Pacific has been used as a nuclear weapon testing and dumping site since the end of the second world war.

Grossi has assured that IAEA experts would return to Fukushima repeatedly, for as long as the process takes, to take samples at different locations and confirm the water remains safe. But what happens if the water discharged were found to be unsafe? Won’t it be too late to fix the “scientific” problem then?