Science, Trust, and Cooperation in Transboundary Environmental Risk: Lessons from the Fukushima ALPS-Treated Water Discharge

The controversy surrounding the discharge of ALPS-treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant highlights the limitations of viewing transboundary environmental risks solely through the lens of scientific assessment. This chapter comparatively examines the responses of Japan, China, and South Korea to the transboundary environmental risk posed by the discharge of ALPS-treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, using a three-layer analytical framework of science, trust, and multilateral cooperation. The analysis reveals that the core of the conflict lies not merely in differences in scientific knowledge regarding technical safety, but also in philosophical and institutional divergences over risk definition and assessment frameworks, gaps in perceptions of decision-making legitimacy, and a lack of trust arising from deficiencies in verification systems. Differences in risk perception—Japan’s standards-compliance model, China’s precautionary-principle model, and South Korea’s verification-dependent model—led to divergent policy decisions based on the same data. On the other hand, the establishment of a multilateral independent verification mechanism centered on the IAEA provided an institutional framework for managing conflicts in the absence of consensus, enabling a transition toward coordinated governance. This chapter highlights that, in transboundary environmental risk governance, designing institutions to “institutionalize differences” is more crucial than achieving full consensus, and calls for institutional arrangements that incorporate inclusive procedures, diversified verifiability, and adaptive learning capacities.