Japan said on Tuesday it will start releasing more than 1 million metric tonnes of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant on Aug. 24, putting into motion a plan that has drawn strong criticism from China.
TOKYO, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Japan said on Tuesday it will start releasing more than 1 million metric tonnes of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant on Aug. 24, putting into motion a plan that has drawn strong criticism from China.
The plan, approved two years ago by the Japanese government as crucial to decommissioning the plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) (9501.T), has also faced criticism from local fishing groups, who fear reputational damage and a threat to their livelihood.
"I promise that we will take on the entire responsibility of ensuring the fishing industry can continue to make their living, even if that will take decades," Kishida said on Monday.
Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in July that Japan had shown selfishness and arrogance, and had not fully consulted the international community about the water release.
South Korean activists have also protested the plan, although Seoul has concluded from its own study that the water release meets international standards and said it respects the IAEA's assessment.
The water was used to cool the fuel rods of Fukushima Daiichi after it melted down in an accident caused by a huge tsunami in 2011 that battered Japan's eastern coast.
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Very very small amounts of radiation is not bad. Your body is exposed to this every day.
Japans plan is to dilute the "water" so much that it should be at safe levels while it decays. They're also not going to release all of it at once, which might not be clear to some readers.
I believe their plan is widely recognized to be safe, but obviously there is a lot of fear around nuclear and radiation.
I believe the worry is that this amount has never Been released before, and that while we might consider it safe, there is a chance it accumulates somewhere to harmful levels.
And obvious consumers of fish are already reacting. Would you buy "safe" fish from Chernobyl if you could just as easily buy the same fish from South Korea?
The discharge limit for tritium is pre-defined in the Government Policy for discharges of ALPS treated water as 22 TBq per year, which is equivalent to the pre-accident discharge limits at FDNPS.
I'm also curious about how much discharge nuclear generators normally produce. If they discharge a certain amount as part of normal operation then it seems to me to also become a function of how many nuclear generators are being operated globally.
The Hongyanhe reactor annually releases 4x as many becquerels of tritium. The Fukushima metldown released 5,000x as much. So this is obviously a non-issue being drummed up due to politics. 🙄
It'll dilute so quickly and thoroughly into the ocean that it might as well not be there. This is a classic case of the public panicking over the word "nuclear."
China's Hongyanhe power plant releases 4x as much radiation lol. It's fake, unscientific concern being published for geopolitical reasons. I say this as someone who otherwise agrees with most of what the Chinese government has to say.
yeah everybody just ignore the actual important bit of information:
That water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organisation drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre, according to Tepco. A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity.
china and south korea beeing shocked is a political and cultural thing..because its always cool bashing thr neighbor to feel better about your self.
I'm no expert nor do i aprove atomic waste dumping in the ocean. just trying to bring up a.talking point here.
While the reported tritium levels may be below the World Health Organisation's drinking water limit, it's important to note that tritium's potential risks depend on various factors such as the quantity released, dilution rates in the ocean, and potential bioaccumulation in the aquatic ecosystem.
Over the last three decades and especially the last decade (the Fukushima accident) TEPCO has a history of missteps, reprehensible neglect, denial, and most of all creative work with their own documents or even more creative backdating of already existing documents to make everything look okay on paper so they can continue to get funding from the government here (sorry, actually just a bunch of LDP gerontocrats and 日本会議 members) to cover their fuckups. They have shown nothing but a series of lies and utter incompetence over the past decade. Anything they say should be taken with a very large grain of salt. They seem to want to forget that even for days and perhaps weeks afterwards they claimed that nothing actually happened and that it was a fraction compared to XYZ. And actually there was no problem, they claimed there was no problem even when people started moving. And then they pretended that they never said there was no problem and were transparent. But people here are not used to question or check whatever they are being told