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23/3/04

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KAGAKU SHIMBUN — SHA CO. LTD

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Sellafield seekssolid foundation forcleaner wastewater

Kiyoshi Kurokawa (standing) wants Japan to implement its own version of the US National Academies.

Japan shakes up council tooffer scientists political clout
David Cyranoski, Tokyo

Don’t hold your breath — but Japanesescientists may be on the verge of getting astrong voice in their nation’s policy-making.
At a parliamentary committee hearing on
19 March, the country’s minister of scienceand technology and the president of theScience Council of Japan (SCJ) proposed
moving the currently ineffectual council —which represents some 760,000 scientists
from 1,481 academic societies — from theministry of home affairs to the prime minister’s office.
SCJ president Kiyoshi Kurokawa claims
that the transfer could put the council on apar with the US National Academies, which
advise the government on many topics
related to science,medicine and engineering.
This would give the council the status it
was intended to have, advocates of thechange say. Since its foundation in 1949, theSCJ has reported to the government on issues
from mad cow disease to scientific misconduct. But with some exceptions, its advice
has been ignored, says Kurokawa. Ministries
instead took advice from their scientificcommittees, he says.
“The SCJ has always been an advisory
body — now it would be a real one,” theSCJ’s executive director, Masatsugu Yoshida,commented at the hearing.
Kurokawa says that central government
needs a voice that is not compromised byministerial affiliation. The existing advisorycommittees are “a protective mechanism forbureaucrats when policies fail”, he says.
But whether the promised influence andindependence will materialize remains to beseen. Yukio Hatoyama, a prominent representative of the opposition Democratic Party,agrees that the council should be reformed.
NATURE | VOL 428 | 25 MARCH 2004 | www.nature.com/nature“The purpose of the council isn’t clear to thepeople,” he told the hearing. “It has a meagreexistence.” Hatoyama remains unconvincedthat the proposed reforms will enable thecouncil to give independent advice on sensitive topics, as it will be attached to the prime
minister’s office and reliant on it for funding
and administrative support.
Toshimitsu Motegi, the science minister,argued that the reformed council would beindependent. Kurokawa added that the body
would be transparent in all of its functions
and would post its reports on the Internet.
Under the proposal, the SCJ would workwith the Council for Science and Technology
Policy (CSTP), the country’s top science
policy-making body. But the CSTP has been
criticized as being out of touch with science.
Its 15 members include the prime minister,
six ministers of state, and eight private citizens appointed by the government, few ofwhom are working researchers.
The proposal also seeks to allow the SCJ’s
210 members to elect new members directly.
The current method — taking people recommended by member societies — creates
an environment where members are seen as
representing their society’s interests, says
Kurokawa. The council’s seven existing divisions would be combined into three: humanand social sciences; life sciences; and physicalsciences and engineering.
The diet’s lower house will meet again
this week and is expected to approve theproposal and pass it on to the upper house. It
is likely to become law in April. In preparation for the SCJ’s beefed-up role, Kurokawa
is setting up a joint committee with theUS National Academies to look at topics
related to national security.
■

Laura Nelson, London
Persistent discharges of radioactive waste
into the Irish Sea could come to an end
thanks to a technique that can lift anawkward pollutant out of water.
Chemists at the Sellafield
reprocessing plant in northwest Englandhave tested a process aimed at removing
technetium-99 from wastewater.
Technetium-99 has a half-life of
213,000 years and is the mainradionuclide still being discharged from
Sellafield. It has been accumulating inseaweed and lobsters as far afield as theNorth Sea, leading to angry protests fromthe Norwegian and Irish governments.
Most of Sellafield’s technetium-99 wasgenerated by a now-disused processing
plant, and some 1,800 m3 of contaminatedwastewater is stored in tanks at the site.
The isotope had proved awkward toextract and so the water, once cleaned ofother pollutants, is being dumped into
the sea at a rate of about 240 m3 per year.
The new cleaning process uses the salttetraphenylphosphonium bromide(TPP), which is added to the wastewater.
TPP binds with technetium-99 to form
an insoluble compound that precipitatesout as a solid.
The Sellafield chemists completed tests
on the technique in December and will
release their evaluation in April. If theresults are positive — as many observers
expect — BNFL, which operates the plant,
is set to implement the technology at a
cost of £2 million (US$3.7 million).
“The results are very promising but
we still have to go through a final
assessment,” says Ian Parker, head ofnuclear regulation at the UK Environment
Agency, which oversees the plant.
Parker adds that the agency had been
worried that the precipitate might havebeen difficult to incorporate in concrete
for safe and permanent disposal, but thatearly test results suggest this can be done.
Technetium-99 is not thought to beharmful in small doses, but Ireland andNorway have complained that traces of
the isotope found in marine life have led
to cuts in the prices fish merchants will
pay for lobsters and other seafood.
The abatement technology could easea major headache for BNFL, but otherproblems remain at Sellafield. Europeancourts, for example, have been hearing aplea from the Irish government for thefacility to close its mixed oxide fuel plant,
which releases small amounts of■plutonium into the sea.
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