DECEPTION is a key factor in the current age to hard sell sustainability as a product and lifestyle. Generally, many will assume that products or services sold by a company are not faked because the government allows the company to operate. Some of us know how limited the knowledge of some ministries is with regard to sustainability. The power of advertising and promotion makes the gullible public a victim of such deceptive actions.
Recently, a developer of a so-called “smart city” proclaimed that they have converted a piece of wasteland (disused mining zone) into a liveable city using trees as a tool to overturn the degraded zone. It sounds like a successful story without science.
Generally, disused mining zones need decontamination due to potential heavy metal pollution. However, no such process was reported. Thus, the first question would be where was this wastewater pumped to?
We already can see in other disused mining pool areas where the mining pool water is just pumped to the nearest drainage or river and the pools are then filled with earth and new buildings come up quickly. If the pollutants are still at the mining zones, a new settlement has just created a new path for these pollutants to move via the groundwater regime. Plants that have been in these areas for decades run the risk of being contaminated by such heavy metals too.
Smart marketing may not be able to prove “sustainability” when science speaks.
On the foreign front, in April this year, Japan announced that it will release more than 1 million tons of treated wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. In April 2020, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report that clearly showed how Tepco (Tokyo Electricity Power Co), the owner operator of the nuclear power plant, failed to contain the situation and led to the accumulation of a vast amount of wastewater.
However, IAEA reported Tepco’s failures in such a positive manner that many may have been misled.
Pollution and health risk is not an ongoing lab test on humans. These are incidents or accidents that are reported and immediate health assessments done. Via this, a country or agency discovers health impacts on humans and the environment based on the magnitude of the pollution.
Decades ago, spent nuclear fuel was dumped into the ocean as a waste disposal mechanism. Eventually, this was proven to be wrong and corrective measures put in place while unknown damage was already done. Current technology and monitoring methods may not have found a way to measure the impact of “treated wastewater” from the Fukushima Daiichi and other nuclear power plants.
Kyodo News reported on Arpil 16 this year that “Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso repeated his claim that it is safe to drink treated radioactive water accumulating at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after China asked him to personally prove it”.
Based on Aso’s statement, he actually has a solution for the problem where the Japanese government can convert the treated wastewater into drinking water, green tea or miso soup rather than dumping it into the sea. Why is the Japanese government not doing so? Are they afraid of the repercussion of consuming “treated wastewater” from the Fukushima Daiichi plant?
There is only one ocean and treating it like a waste basket is not a salient way. The risks of nuclear technology should be managed within the boundary of those nations that succumb to nuclear technology.
Do not pass the buck for all to shoulder.
This article was contributed by Piarapakaran S, president of the Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia (Awer), a non-government organisation involved in research and development in the fields of water, energy and environment.
Source: The Sun Daily
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