04/30/2025
Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World delivered a speech at the United Nations condemning the ongoing dumping of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1h/k1hse9op1q (around 53:37-)
The full statement is the following:
NGO Statement by Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World
for the Third Preparatory Committee for the Non-Proliferation Treaty
Thank you, Mr. Chair. This statement was endorsed by 121 organizations worldwide.
We are a volunteer-led group which was established in 2012, on the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Our mission is to undo the unconscionable labors of the original Manhattan Project that unleashed nuclear weapons and nuclear energy upon the world. We promote human rights-centered policies to protect the rights of members of nuclear-affected communities from ongoing negative impacts caused by nuclear colonialism and nuclear imperialism.
In March 2011, a declaration of nuclear emergency was issued in Japan. Fourteen years have passed since then, but the emergency declaration is still in place. Tens of thousands of people are still displaced. Hundreds of children have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer in Fukushima. This number is extremely alarming, especially because annual pediatric thyroid cancer cases in Japan were only 1 or 2 cases per million before the disaster.
We strongly condemn the ongoing dumping of 1.3 million metric tons of so-called “treated” yet radioactive wastewater from TEPCO’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. The dumping started in August 2023, and it will continue for three decades or more. The wastewater contains dozens of radioactive isotopes, such as plutonium-239, strontium-90, cesium-137, and iodine-129, that cannot be eliminated completely by TEPCO’s dysfunctional filtering system. The system cannot eliminate tritium and carbon-14 at all. The original radioactive wastewater accumulated at the damaged site is extremely radioactive, because the wastewater comes from the cooling water for highly radioactive molten cores of damaged nuclear reactors, as well as contaminated groundwater and rainwater.
The characterization of tritium and other radioactive isotopes as harmless is reckless and counter to science. Tritium contaminates food and drinking water, and it crosses placenta, impacting fetus and embryo. Tritium has been clinically shown to be more effective at damaging and destroying living cells than gamma rays. Tritium can produce typical radiogenic impacts including cancer, genetic effects, developmental abnormalities, and reproductive effects. Dilution is not a solution. Diluting radioactive wastewater to meet a regulatory standard does not change the total amount of radioactivity that will be dumped into the Pacific Ocean. The IAEA should declare officially that this approach does not meet key protection and safety requirements and therefore cannot be declared safe. It is extremely regrettable that G7 leaders and EU expressed support for the dumping.
When the dumping plan was first announced in 2021, three independent human rights experts appointed by the Human Rights Council expressed deep regret at this decision. They stated that “experts believe alternative solutions to the problem are available.” They also emphasized that such dumping “imposes considerable risks to the full enjoyment of human rights by concerned populations in and beyond the borders of Japan.”
We stand in solidarity with hundreds of fishers and residents in Japan who filed injunction lawsuits against TEPCO in 2023. They demand an immediate halt to the dumping of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. We also stand in deep solidarity with Pacific Island communities who continue to bear the brunt of nuclear testing legacies and now face renewed harm from radioactive ocean dumping. We demand an immediate halt to this reckless dumping policy and call for implementing alternative solutions, such as building large storage tanks.
We also stand with courageous youths in Fukushima who filed a class-action lawsuit against TEPCO, claiming that they developed thyroid cancer due to radiation exposure in the wake of the nuclear disaster. They were between 6 and 16 years of age in March 2011.
We would also like to extend our solidarity with diverse nuclear-victims, such as hibakusha (or atomic bomb survivors), hibaku-nisei and descendants of hibakusha, hibaku-taikensha, and many others, including black-rain survivors who are fighting to be recognized as hibakusha, as well as all those impacted by uranium activities, nuclear testing, nuclear disasters, radioactive waste, depleted-uranium bombs, and nuclear programs of nuclear-arms states and their nuclear allies.
Mr. Chair, excellencies, and fellow colleagues,
Each nuclear-affected community carries a painful history, and we proclaim our universal responsibility to prevent further nuclear harm. We question the premise and rhetoric of nuclear industry advocacy organizations, which promote so-called “atoms for peace,” impede victim assistance, and create more victims.
The protections being afforded uranium enterprises run counter to the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament. The purpose of uranium mining and the entire fuel chain is to create nuclear technology for nuclear weapons material, such as tritium and plutonium ; such mining leads to proliferation risks and security crises. It is imperative that we acknowledge that the entire nuclear fuel chain - from uranium mining to reactors and the resulting radioactive waste - destroys peoples and their exercise of their inalienable rights to life, health, self-development, access to a clean and healthy environment, and other fundamental rights guaranteed by core international instruments. We, therefore, call member states to acknowledge that nuclear energy is neither peaceful nor a climate solution.
No nukes!
Thank you very much.
The Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) held from 28 April to 9 May 2025 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
