By piping nuclear water, Japan breaks own and international laws

Any attempt Japan makes to pipe the Fukushima nuclear contaminated water into the ocean will not only violate international law, but also its own domestic laws, said Zhang Yanqiang, a professor on maritime law studies at Dailian Maritime University.

Japan's Atomic Energy Basic Act requires the nation to follow international standards and ensure security while utilizing nuclear energy, while its Act on the Regulation of Nuclear Source Material, Nuclear Fuel Material and Reactors further defines the responsibility of nuclear utilizers to prevent leakage, Zhang said, pointing out that all these have laid legal foundations for lawsuits in the framework of Japanese domestic laws.

It was at a seminar on the legal issues of Fukushima nuclear waste water sewage that the professor shared this. On April 8, the China Institute for Ocean Security of Ocean University of China (OUC) held a roundtable, inviting about a dozen experts to talk about the issue.

Zhang listed 17 Japanese domestic cases in which local residents and organizations sued the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government to court from March 2017 to July 2017, of which nine primary trials found the Japanese government responsible for the nuclear waste water sewage and eight found not; four of them had finished high-court trials, of which three found the Japanese government liable.

He particularly pointed out that in June 2022 the Supreme Court of Japan made its final verdict on four collective lawsuits raised by local residents of Fukushima, finding that TEPCO, not the Japanese government, should be held responsible for the issue. "That means the Japanese judiciary is trying to separate the Japanese government from TEPCO on the nuclear contaminated water issue," he said, prompting all relevant parties to stay alert.

Xing Guangmei, a senior researcher on international maritime law at the institute, said the nuclear contamination water is not a conflict between Japan and any other other country based on interests or ideologies, but a problem facing the whole of human kind. "No country is absolutely safe from the disaster," she said at the seminar, calling for more international cooperation to prevent it.

Xing is echoed by Professor Jin Yongming from OUC, who called for more scientific discussions on the issue so as to find a solution to the problem for all. Mei Hong, a professor at OUC Law School, listed the responsibilities of a national government in protecting the maritime environment under a comprehensive framework of domestic and international laws, which range from the duty of minimizing marine environment undue risks, compensation for possible damage to the marine environment, to the state responsibilities for cross-border oceanic environmental undue risk and then to possible international criminal liabilities.

Mei also called for better coordination between private and public international laws to more effectively deal with the issues. Zhang proposed China to submit the issue to the international court not as a lawsuit, but for advisory opinions, pointing out that’s what we could do to most hopefully solve the problem within the framework of international law.

Two years have passed since the Japanese government officially decided to pipe the nuclear waste water into the ocean on April 13, 2021, which shared the intention to start the piping in two years.