When Tokyo Electric Power Company finished digging a one-kilometer underground tunnel on April 26, providing an outlet to discharge contaminated nuclear wastewater into the sea, they had spent all that time and money on what amounted to a technicality.

In 1972, the year the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force, several countries agreed to adopt the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, or the London Dumping Convention, which sets strict rules on dumping waste into the ocean.

Yet at a meeting of the Protocol of the Convention in October 2022, when the South Korean delegate pointed out Japan had violated the convention, the Japanese delegate argued they were not technically "dumping" the nuclear contaminated waste water due to the construction of the pipeline, and said the issue "should not be discussed" at such meetings.

Whether discharged from a ship, a tunnel above sea level or a pipe under it, nuclear-contaminated wastewater is radioactive and will pose a grave threat to marine life.

Japan's move won't help it escape the necessary consequences. Instead, it only exposes the dishonesty of the Japanese government and TEPCO, who spend all their energy playing with semantics rather than doing the right thing.