Robert Richmond (Research Prof. at Univ. of Hawaii in Manoa)

[Music] if we are not sure no harm will be caused then we should not proceed that's the unified voice of the Pacific Islands Forum a group of 18 countries sitting on the Pacific Ocean where Japan plans to release over 1 million tons of nuclear contaminated water a panel of experts at The Forum conducted an independent study on the plan safety and they say that there's still not enough data to prove that the discharge will be harmless to humans and the environment in the years going forward in part two of our two-part series on the Fukushima water release plan we today invite Dr Robert Richmond he is a research professor and director of The kiala Marine Lab at the University of Hawaii in monoa he is one of the five independent scientists at the Pacific Islands forum who conducted the safety assessment thank you for joining us Dr Richmond and good morning to you thank you very much thanks for the invitation uh so of course first and foremost we want to talk about the transparency and the reliability of the data already collected can we jump into the big question of data credibility so the Pacific Islands form inspection team has concluded that Japan's claims of Total Safety are not supported by the information provided by the plant operator TECO so what exactly were the available data and what makes you and your team skeptical um so it's taken quite a while to get access to the data we were given bits and pieces a lot of times in raw data form that took uh hours and days to be able to work our way through um initially we were very frustrated with both the data that were available and the form and format in which it was presented we had several meetings and finally were able to get some of the data that we really needed and you know we have a saying in the work we do on environmental health is that uh an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence meaning if you don't have data you can't say that it means it's okay it simply means you don't have data so we continue to push for us to get the data we needed um one of our concerns is that they have over a thousand tanks and we were trying to get information on exactly what's in the tanks um is it seawater is it freshwater is there organic sludge how many samples did they take how often did they take and there's a very uh typical tool we use in science and statistics called a power analysis and it says if you have a thousand tanks uh with a million tons of water around how many samples would you need to take to have any confidence and so one of my first questions on technique was can you show us your power analysis to demonstrate that your sampling was adequate to tell us what's in there and they never did it you know I teach at University I have students first thing we do on an experiment is you do your power analysis to know your experimental design and so here we have people telling us on something as important as this we didn't do one um the argument is made but we don't really care what's in the tanks we only care what we're planning to put in the ocean we can accept that to a degree but if it gets back to the confidence and credibility if you don't know what you're starting with how can you really interpret the effectiveness of your treatment um whether or not uh it's being uh removing the things that you say at the level you want to um there are over 64 radio nuclides in the water some of them you can pretty much ignore because of very short half lives uh others um are a bit more comp complicated like because it's impossible to remove using their Advanced Li processing system um there's been a lot of discussion about trium is certainly not the only radionucleide but it is a radio nucle of Interest along with carbon 14 because neither of these two can be removed using the AL system um the argument is made that you can dilute them down and then as we begin to look at the data um if the ocean were a sterile fiberglass or glass vessel the chemistry holds up and we're not arguing with the chemical calculations what we are saying is when you put biology in everything changes you put radi nucleid or any toxic can in the water and organisms will take it up they'll move it up through trophic levels in the food web and it can be accumulated over time uh tridium is well known for that it's called organically bound tridium so many of the data that we were hoping to get are not there other data that we got in bits and pieces are from experiments that don't address the right question they're doing an experiment on the uptake and accumulation of tridium in bottom fish and so we asked the question how are you running the experiment and what are you feeding the fish they're feeding the fish uh commercial pellets they're not feeding them the material that's being exposed to radio nucleid and this is the issue drinking tridium is a lot different than eating material that has trium in it uh external exposure to a beta which trium is one but all the radio nucleid SE uh Radioactive cesium strontium and others external exposure is quite different than internal exposure so we're trying to get a handle on what's relevant to the Pacific island leaders these are communities that live entirely dependent on the ocean uh economically ecologically culturally it's their food it's their source of income it's their culture and our mission was quite straightforward review the data and respond to the Pacific island leaders as to whether or not we see ample evidence that this is a safe way going forward and as for me I still do not feel comfortable in making that pronouncement quite the opposite I see data G missing I see uh assumptions that are being made that are not scientifically based this is supposed to go on for over 30 years and so looking at what brought us to this point in time I would be remiss in my responsibility if did not do my due diligence and ask a how did we get here and how is this going to be any different than what happened last time uh assurances were given that everything would be just fine um that the placement of the nuclear power plant was okay all precautions were put in and we know that that was false um inadequate preparations were made for a tsunami that was in fact predicted by the scientists who did the modeling um there were numerous errors made across the board in terms of preparation and adequate protection against justce disaster and now we're being told by some of the very same people who were involved in the decision making to say that the facility was safe telling us well this time we're very serious um the treatment is going to be safe and so again we're not trying to be contentious uh we're not assuming ill intent but if we're being responsible scientists we're datadriven it's not emot it's not anything else show us the data when they've provided us with sufficient data and many of the chemists and we agree with them they're saying by calculation the levels would be very low uh levels that we see in fish already starting in 2011 are in fact low but we're very concerned about what happens to radi nucleid in the sediment what happens to radio nucleid working their way up to the food chain what happens to the transboundary issue this water is not going to stay off Japan and so in the international treaties and law of the sea they address the issue of transboundary concerns there's a particular document that's presented by the international atomic energy agency called GSG 8 a general safety guideline 8 which deals with the issue of transboundary concerns we rais that if it goes into the ocean it's clearly transboundary and that's been largely danced around and said well but we're looking at other issues as well it's very clear there are two safety concerns we have one is a transboundary issue number two is what's called Alara as low as reasonably achievable and that means in essence nobody should be exposed to radio nucleid unless there's a direct benefit to them and the answer is the people of the Pacific and Korea and throughout the world did nothing to cause this particular problem yet they have an awful lot to lose as a result of it and absolutely nothing to gain and so in the world of treaties to try to protect that people need to understand my area strength I'm a marine biologist I study the oceans and ocean Health every day people have to understand we're not dealing with a a clean canvas of a painting we're dealing with an ocean that's already under tremendous stress from pollution everything from pesticides nutrients heavy metal mercury and fish we're looking at climate change elevated seawater temperature bleaching events we're looking at excess nutrients so the oceans already in Decline due to a variety of other stressors and it's impossible to come in and say well we're just talking about radio nucleid now it's like human health and ocean Health are so inextricably linked we saw those was covid the people who predominantly died of covid were those that had underlying health conditions I would argue as a marine biologist the ocean already has underlying health conditions and now we're adding another stressor that you can't simply discount it and say well we'll only examine the effects of the radio new cides independent of everything else it has to be taken as one additional concern that we have we got to stop using the ocean as a Dumping Ground for everything that we make mistakes for and we understand this was a tragedy it was a catastrophe and our hearts go out to the people of Japan and we understand you can't go back we can only go forward but by the same token if mistakes were made in the past we need to be convinced that these mistakes are not going to be repeated and number two we need to look at this is intergenerational over 30 years so that's my generation my daughter's generation and any grandchildren's generation and how do we understand that this is going to go forward and again when I talk to the chemist I'm not arguing with them about their calculations of low levels chemically I'm not arguing with them about delution factors and the various things about one mver when you look at concentrations of safety concern what I am concerned about is adequately addressing the bioaccumulation Tropic transfer the movement around the ocean the chances of a mistake and the monitoring program is set up people need to understand monitoring doesn't prevent problems it identifies when you have a problem I operate under What's called the precautionary principle and that's exactly what the leaders have said until you have convinced us that this is safe the precautionary principle says we have to assume that it's not when you provide us with adequate accurate data including well-designed experiments to address the issue of uptake and accumulation then if the data hold up we're fine until that time the answer is no uh Dr Richmond I do have to ask because we want to provide as much as we can possibly understand a balanced view on the matter so last week we talked to an expert who said the Fukushima water release is not a major point of concern in fact he said that Japan has set a very conservative standard of tridium in waters to be discharged even lower than those of other countries that routinely released trium containing water from nuclear reactors for the past six decades without significant harm to both humans or even marine biology or the environments what is your take on that argument okay um I don't disagree that it's been released by others for a long time um I'm of the firm belief that because other people behave badly does not justify more bad behavior we're at a time in the world where we should be looking at how do we reduce stressors in the ocean rather than add to them um again we're looking at cumulative effects and that's one of the issues here we're not going to see things happening quickly the levels of uh going forward at the Alps with the dilution U remember Alps will not remove tridium but tridium may not even be the most important one to consider and that's the problem there are other radio nucleid that we are more concerned about like cesium and strontium and Cobalt that are not adequately addressed in the issues that we've raised about bio accumulation and concentration they haven't looked carefully at reservoirs and sediment and so things don't just disappear in the ocean they get moved around they get cycled as well so again the calculations I agree I'm not arguing with the dilution factor and the amount that's there in the low levels what I am concerned about is a what happens if and when there's a mistake made and a higher release than is calculated B are they adequately and accurately looking at the uptake and accumulation of the Tropic transfer and this is where I have additional doubts others may be comfortable but I am not and again if we take our responsibility seriously to be able to inform the leaders to say um we think it's safe or not I still cannot put myself in the safe column until I see these data that are missing uh the experiments that are run that should be there and once again this is like uh there are two kinds of concerns on the human health side ones that we call deterministic health effects which are the ones you see right away if you get exposed to high level radiation you can get skin burns you can get cellular damage Etc um the other one are the call the stochastic these are the ones by chance and that's cancer you're not going to see it happening immediately nobody's going to immediately die from this release that we can see what we can see then are long-term exposures we can see the effects statistically speaking that it's not going to make things better uh with regard to these health effects it all comes down to the volume and the uh concentration that people are exposed to and how it goes through as well and once again we're doing our due diligence to ask these fundamental questions that a will it impact the health of our oceans on top of everything else that's going on B um is it going to eventually accumulate and have longer term effects especially in the stochastic the epidemiology of cancer is very hard to deal with um so it's hard to predict exactly what's going to go on but the other issue is is there a better alternative right and that's what we've been trying to focus in on and the reality is is that yeah we've done calculations we actually um produced a a technical p paper that we provided to the Pacific island Forum that shows that they could use the water in a much shorter period of time if they mixed it with concrete to be used either on site or in other areas without a lot of exposure to people and this takes away transboundary issues it takes away transgenerational issues and it keeps it in Japan and the obvious question is if they are guaranteeing that the Alps treated water is completely safe with no potential effects on the environment or human health then why are they so hesitant to use that to make concrete to be used on site that is another red flag for us in terms of saying it's one thing to say it's safe it's another thing to demonstrate that it's safe by doing the responsible thing removing the transboundary issue removing any chance of this getting into ocean food chains and just bind it up in concrete to be used onsite or locally and so far we've had many excuses but none of them are satisfaction and not that we can put a prize tag on health but could cost Effectiveness be one of the reasons why it would deter Japanese government from using it in concrete mixture as you've said yeah and again you know that's the issue we often run into when people look at cost benefit analysis they often look at the short-term instead of the long-term consequences and these are things that are a little bit harder to do when you have these stochastic issues so again I agree with a lot of the chemists that are out there saying well the dilution rate is very high um it seems to be easier and cheaper for the Japanese to treat the water and dump it in the ocean that because it saves them money is not an excuse to be able to put other people at risk and this goes back to the issues of transboundary and transgenerational if they keep it on site these international issues immediately disappear if they bind it up in concrete you know tridium only has a half life of 12.3 years in 50 years it's down to 6% of its ionizing radiation compared to what it is immediately after release these are viable options and these are options that we've heard every excuse in the world but the cause benefit analysis seems to be let's get rid of it dump it in the ocean we can understand other people other groups have been doing that for a while um perhaps this is also an opportunity as well as a terrible challenge to find better ways of handling what is not only occurred this time it's the second largest nuclear disaster in history this one is predominantly Marine because of its Coastal area but can't we set things up to do a better job going into the future because we know this is not the first incident it's certainly not going to be the last incident and my view is can we use this as an opportunity to do a better job than we've done in the past rather than use past mistakes to justify more going into the future thank you very much Dr Richmond for your insights today we absolutely appreciate it and we hope to speak to you again in the near future thanks for the opportunity if you're listening to our program using the podcast serviced just a reminder that we do go live Monday through Friday 7:00 a.m. Korea Standard Time so tune in and help us make the show more informative by giving us your input see you bright and early on good morning soul