hankyoreh

Japan plans to release into the ocean the 1.33 million metric tons of radioactive water stored in tanks, shown here, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant over the course of 30 years. (Yonhap)

An investigation by the Hankyoreh has found that the performance of the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), a key facility for ensuring the safe discharge of contaminated water from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean, has never been verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since its installation in 2013.

This clashes with the Korean government’s previous claims that ALPS has been verified to perform its function, and will likely add to controversy on the issue.

In response to criticism that the IAEA hasn’t verified the performance of ALPS, Park Gu-yeon, the first deputy director of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, said, “The evaluation of ALPS’ performance was completed and over with a long time ago.”

The comment came during Monday’s briefing on Japan’s plan to dump contaminated water from the ruined nuclear power plant.

The government cited the IAEA’s “Follow-up Review of Progress Made on Management of ALPS Treated Water and the Report of the Subcommittee on Handling of ALPS treated water at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station” released in April 2020 as evidence.

During Friday’s briefing on the Korean government’s review of the Fukushima wastewater discharge plan, Chairperson Yoo Guk-hee of South Korea’s Nuclear Safety and Security Commission referred to the IAEA’s review.

“My understanding is that the report [released on July 4] did not go into details of the performance on ALPS since the IAEA reviewed the issue in its report published in 2020,” he said.

However, when Hankyoreh on Tuesday examined the specific IAEA report mentioned by Yoo, it found that it had been authored by IAEA staff who had not visited the Fukushima Daiichi site to verify ALPS was operating as intended.

The IAEA wrote in its report that its review team, which consisted of six IAEA professional staff, based its findings on three web-conferences with TEPCO officials in Vienna, Austria, in February and March 2020.

Only two sentences in the 27-page report are devoted to ALPS performance: “The ALPS multi-nuclide removal system continues to operate stably and reliably,” and “The ALPS system has the capacity to routinely and consistently operates to remove 62 radionuclides, apart from tritium, below the regulatory standards for discharge into the environment.”

The IAEA did not provide specific evidence for these statements in its report. This is since the review team’s mandate, which was initiated at the request of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, was never to verify the performance of ALPS.

In the April 2020 report, the IAEA listed three items as the scope of the review: a review of ALPS treated water management status changes, a review of the technical and scientific basis of the analysis of the disposition options, and a review of whether the future actions of the government of Japan are in line with the advisory points provided by the IAEA.

Hahn Pil-soo, who formerly served as the director of the IAEA’s Department of Radiation, Transport and Waste Safety, said at the government’s briefing on Tuesday that the IAEA should “review only what falls within the scope of the review.”

An examination of other reviews conducted by the IAEA on the handling of the Fukushima nuclear disaster found no verification of the performance and reliability of ALPS.

The Hankyoreh examined all five of the agency’s reviews of the “Mid-and-Long-Term Roadmap towards the Decommissioning of TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Units 1-4,” conducted between March 2013 and August 2021, but none of them provided evidence that it had verified the performance of ALPS.

Japan has been emphasizing that ALPS can remove 62 of the 64 radionuclides in the contaminated water below the standard, except for tritium and carbon-14, making it safe for discharge into the ocean.

However, 70 percent of the contaminated water treated by ALPS has failed to meet discharge standards, and frequent failures due to corrosion and filter damage have raised questions about its reliability.

According to data Korea’s inspection team received from TEPCO in May concerning the “major failures of ALPS,” major failures have occurred every year since 2019, which was when the system was supposedly stabilized.

Most recently, last year, a problem with an adsorption tower caused the concentration of strontium-90 in the contaminated water that passed through the system to rise.

“If we want to say that the discharge of contaminated water is safe, we need to have evidence that shows a fair evaluation of the performance of ALPS when it comes to the removal of radionuclides,” said Han Byeong-seop, the head of the Institute for Nuclear Safety.

He went on to state that “I don’t know how we can believe it is safe without such an evaluation.”

By Kim Jeong-su, senior staff writer

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]