Tainted by Japan
Controversy over radioactive cement is coming back to the surface, although cement manufacturers are claiming that they have specific evidence that the coal ash they import from Japan is not harmful.
Civic organizations such as the Korea Radiation Watch and the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement recently held a rally in Seoul to urge that the import of radioactive waste from Japan be stopped. “Korean cement manufacturers are importing coal ash from Japan, although it is highly likely to have been radioactively contaminated due to the Fukushima disaster,” they pointed out, adding, “The Korean government must ban the import of such materials while setting up more precise dosimetric systems.”
The controversy was triggered when lawmaker Jang Ha-na, a member of the Environment & Labor Committee of the National Assembly, said that different Korean cement manufacturers shared the same non-contamination certificate pictures for different Japanese coal ash. In response, the companies claimed that this is a misunderstanding on the part of the lawmaker attributable to a simple administrative error. “The certificate issued by the Matsushima Power Plant and submitted on the Web lost the date part while being printed, leading to some confusion that the certificate pertains to coal ash imported on a different date,” they explained.
The domestic cement industry is concerned over the possibility that this could result in the repetition of last year’s controversy surrounding alleged radioactive cement. At that time, various companies and organizations such as the Korea Cement Association managed to clear some doubts, if not all, by coming up with different data. For example, the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute announced that imported coal ash and cement based on it were free of artificial radioactivity, and the association said that coal ash imported between 2011 and last year was below the natural radiation dosage of 0.3 micro Sieverts, according to its own tests.