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IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi delivers his agency’s final report on the discharge of contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power station to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan at the latter’s residence in Tokyo on July 4. (Reuters/Yonhap)

The South Korean government and the ruling People Power Party (PPP) have emphasized the “scientific” nature of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) examination of the safety of Japan’s plan to release contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean.

But is this actually the case? In my observations of the events from the IAEA’s announcement of its final report to the recent three-day South Korea visit by Director General Rafael Grossi, I was left with an increasingly strong perception: leaving aside any question of how scientific the examination itself was, the methods used to explain those findings have not been especially scientific.

When it comes to announcing scientific conclusions, form is as important as content. When form is lacking, it is taken as a reflection of content inadequacies.

In that sense, the IAEA’s announcement of its final report on July 4 stands in contrast with the announcement of the “AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) three months ago.

The IPCC shared its announcement schedule roughly a month ahead of time and held simultaneous online and offline press conferences for global media when the announcement was made. It had the major authors of the report present to answer questions and arranged separate interviews with them.

This was also the case with its “Physical Science Basis” report announcement two years earlier and its “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” and “Mitigation of Climate Change” reports last year.

In contrast, the IAEA merely posted the final report on its website after an “event” in which Grossi delivered it to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Evoking the image of a contractor turning in a commissioned project to the party that ordered it, the event was a symbolic moment showing the nature of this report.

Indeed, the IAEA has been open from the outset about its examination of the water release plan being conducted after Japan’s request for support toward a “safe” discharge, with the agency signing a “terms of reference” document and reaching an agreement with Japan on the scope of the examination. The IAEA categorizes such activities as “review missions and advisory services” to assist member countries.

To call these activities a “neutral examination” in the context of the debate over whether the contaminated water should be released amounts more or less to fake news.

Regardless of the context behind the examination, the review process itself may or may not be scientific. But the explanation process at least has failed to meet the standards for a scientific announcement. For it to be called “scientific,” the experts who performed the review would need to appear before the press and fellow experts to submit to some tough questions.

Instead, Grossi has monopolized the occasions for explanation, without exposing the experts in question to the media. Even here, his explanations have been inadequate. After coming all the way to South Korea to give an “explanation,” he did not hold a single press conference — instead cherry-picking which news outlets he would grant interviews to before returning.

It’s difficult to explain the decision not to hold a press conference — which might have saved some time compared with separate interviews with five different news outlets — except as a decision meant to avoid uncomfortable questions.

Grossi is not a scientist with a history of studying atomic energy or radioactivity. Hailing from Argentina, he is a career diplomat who studied international relations and political science before establishing his career in the field of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

While he may be loath to admit it, he is not suited to the role of an expert giving a scientific explanation for such reports. His remarks about how people can “drink” and “swim in” the contaminated water are not the language of science, but the language of diplomacy and politics.

When explanations are unscientific and give the impression of pushing people to just “trust us when we say it’s safe,” that will only undermine trust in the report.

By Kim Jeong-su, senior staff writer

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