= Washoku fish centrism really Fukushima safe? =
Why Fukushima Was Preventable
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
https://carnegieendowment.org/2012/03/06/why-fukushima-was-preventable-pub-47361
— People in Tokyo protest a decision to start releasing into the ocean massive amounts of treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant. The plant was damaged in a 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Eugene Hoshiko/AP
Japan To Dump Wastewater From Wrecked Fukushima Nuclear Plant Into Pacific Ocean
April 13, 2021
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/13/986695494/japan-to-dump-wastewater-from-wrecked-fukushima-nuclear-plant-into-pacific-ocean?t=1623603461681
Fish contaminated with radiation caught off northeastern Fukushima Prefecture
February 24, 2021
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210224/p2a/00m/0na/014000c
The following is a visual summary explaining the Fukushima nuclear disaster which the Japanese government investigation concluded was a man-made disaster in the making.
The Fukushima disaster in maps and charts
March 10, 2021
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/10/fukushima-disaster-in-maps-and-charts
How serious is the harm of Fukushima Nuclear Sewage ?
https://medicaltrend.org/2021/04/14/how-serious-is-the-harm-of-fukushima-nuclear-sewage/
Washoku emphasizes a cuisine based heavily on rice, meat, and seafood especially to the point of presenting it even raw as sushi as a prime example proof of concept quality and safety for human consumption. So it would seem protecting the seas around Japan and the immense Pacific Ocean must be a sincerest cultural priority at least for maintaining washoku.
Not just empty talk.
Yet on the flipside, Japan has constantly been announcing plans threatening to dump one million tons of radioactive wastewater stored at the crippled Fukushima reactors for years. But in 2021 with the backing of the IAEA and awaited green light from a newly elected American president, despite worldwide complaints (based on the plain concern the oceans are shared globally), it seems Japan will bully its way into dumping everything into the Pacific Ocean in a cost cutting cheapskate action finally.
So much for washoku sincerity, more cultural show than sincere, since it was a Japanese government 2013 concocted contrivance anyhow to promote export that plummeted after the Fukushima nuclear disaster of Japanese foodstuffs abroad through UNESCO backed “Washoku” branding.
The negative impact on foodstuffs has already been proven around the east coast Tohoku region of Japan since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, that the Japanese themselves are still leery of consuming Fukushima rice and seafood. Many nations including the United States still have restrictions in place banning Fukushima contaminated foodstuffs.
http://fukushima-diary.com/tag/rockfish/
Dumping more than one million tons of still radiocative water (due to the covered up failure of Japan’s ALPS scubbing system failure to do its alleged task) will certainly have an impact on radiation levels on all sea life in the Pacific Ocean.
But when has Japan and the United States really cared sincerely?
U.S. Alone in Backing Japan Fukushima Water Plan Ripped by China
April 13, 2021
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/japan-to-dump-treated-radioactive-fukushima-water-into-ocean
U.S. Friends Join China in Ripping Japan Plan on Fukushima Water
April 12, 2021
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-12/japan-to-dump-treated-radioactive-fukushima-water-into-ocean
For the US, Japan is the friend who can do no wrong — even when it’s dumping radioactive waste water into the ocean
April 16, 2021
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3129666/us-japan-friend-who-can-do-no-wrong-even-when-its-dumping
• The US has stood by its ally even as regional governments and environmental activists raised concerns over the decision to dump 1 million tonnes of Fukushima waste water into the Pacific Ocean
• Washington’s quick support for Tokyo has sparked accusations that environmental concerns are trumped by US strategic considerations
What does American green light for polluting the world’s fisheries and aquaculture with Japan’s Fukushima radioactive waste dumped into the Pacific Ocean have to do with “US strategic considerations”? Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours…
United States is now spearheading pushing atmospheric climate change as a global concern with Japan in tow. Yet, below the atmosphere, the hydrosphere is no concern. Politically, the two, Earth’s atmosphere above and oceans below, are perhaps disconnected by American and Japanese insincere interests.
Why is Japan hiding critical testing data, dumping first while withholding the results? Very peculiar how much Fukushima wastewater planned to be dumped into the Pacific Ocean has to hide behind in the darkness. “The solution to pollution is dilution.”
Fukushima nuke plant water to be released into sea before tritium test results revealed
June 12, 2021
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210612/p2a/00m/0sc/010000c
The treated water stored in tanks on the Fukushima Daiichi plant grounds contains 64 radioactive substances. Seventy percent of the wastewater produced at the plant has concentration levels of radioactive substances besides tritium that exceed national government standards for release into the sea.
The real issue is not the high levels of heavy water tritium that TEPCO keeps drumming up as harmless. Rather, it is the other 64 highly radioactive substances mixed in the wastewater revealed in the test analysis which is being hidden.
ALPS system at Fukushima №1 plant failing to remove more than tritium from toxic cooling water
August 19, 2018
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/08/19/national/alps-system-fukushima-no-1-plant-failing-remove-tritium-toxic-cooling-water/
The tritium-tainted water piling up at the crippled Fukushima №1 nuclear power plant has been found to contain other radioactive substances, defying the defunct plant’s special treatment system, Kyodo News has learned.
The government and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. are under pressure to dispose the treated water, which is accumulating in hundreds of tanks on the premises. One option is to dump it into the sea, as tritium, a normal byproduct of nuclear operations, is said to pose little risk to human health in diluted form.
If the plan goes through, the tritium-tainted water is expected to be diluted so it will likely lower the levels of the other radioactive materials before discharge.
But fishermen and residents are worried about the water discharge plan, and a government panel debating how to deal with it has mainly focused on the tritium rather than the other substances.
According to Tepco, a maximum of 62.2 becquerels per liter of iodine 129, far higher than the 9 becquerel legal limit, was found in the water filtered by the Advanced Liquid Processing System, which was reportedly capable of removing everything but tritium.
Iodine 129 has a half-life of 15.7 million years.
Tepco, which gathered data in fiscal 2017 through March, also detected a maximum 92.5 becquerels of ruthenium 106, shy of the 100 becquerel legal limit, as well as 59 becquerels of technetium 99 against the limit of 1,000 becquerels.
The Fukushima №1 complex was damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Reactors 1 to 3 suffered fuel meltdowns as their cooling systems were crippled.
Water is injected perpetually to keep the fuel cold but it is extremely toxic. The water is filtered by the ALPS system but removing the tritium remains difficult.
As of August, around 920,000 tons of tritium-containing water are stored in some 680 tanks within the premises. But Tepco said it has not checked the concentration of radioactive materials in each tank.
There are revealed confirmation of 64 radioactive substances above safety limits besides just radioactive iodine. The cooling water is in direct contact with the spilled nuclear fuel rods, not circulating through separated cooling pipes to indirectly absorb heat.
Upon checking, the test results that prove the ALPS filtration system is a total embarrasing flop must be kept from the global public. And running the same water through ALPS a second time will not help because the filtration dud technology does not work being ineffective even the first time around.
Japan constantly harrasses South Korea disingenously blaming not following rule of law (secret agreements even UN Human Rights find invalid), yet Japan makes itself a bad example of its own criticism.
The Legal Case Against Japan’s Fukushima Wastewater Decision
May 21, 2021
https://thediplomat.com/2021/05/the-legal-case-against-japans-fukushima-wastewater-decision/
The proposed discharge of wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean would violate Japan’s legal and environmental obligations.
Last and not least, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is an international treaty ratified by over 160 countries, including China, South Korea, and Japan — but not the United States. UNCLOS stipulates that the ocean is the common heritage of mankind. Pursuant to Article 192, all states have the obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment.
Moreover, Article 194 of UNCLOS requires that member countries must: 1) take, individually or jointly as appropriate, all practicable measures necessary to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment from any source; and 2) take all measures necessary to ensure that activities under their jurisdiction or control are so conducted as not to cause damage by pollution to other states and their environment, and that pollution arising from incidents or activities under their jurisdiction or control does not spread beyond the areas where they exercise sovereign rights in accordance with this Convention.
Both the United States and the IAEA have voiced support for Japan’s announced plans for the Fukushima discharge plan.
The IAEA said it would provide technical support for what it deemed to be a feasible means of disposal of the contaminated seawater.
A week later the Biden administration voiced its support for what it said was a plan meeting international safety standard.
This Shellenberger fellow is off his rocker.
It Sounds Crazy, But Fukushima, Chernobyl, And Three Mile Island Show Why Nuclear Is Inherently Safe
March 11, 2019
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11/it-sounds-crazy-but-fukushima-chernobyl-and-three-mile-island-show-why-nuclear-is-inherently-safe/
The author completely ignores the science for political propagandisitic semi-science. Here are findings only reported in reputed science journals he deliberately left out and conveniently ignores to make things look “inherently safe” according his Forbes propaganda piece for nuclear power, only disclosed scientifically almost ten years later.
Did Japan initially try to downplay Fukushima explosions to hide from drawing attention to why Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactors were producing weapon grade hyper radioactive plutonium?
Particulate plutonium released from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns
November 15, 2020
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969720340614
Highlights
• Debris nano-fragments were captured in the cesium-rich microparticles (CsMPs).
• Plutonium and U isotopes in CsMPs have been precisely determined.
• Plutonium oxides occur as a submicron-sized concentrate in uraninite matrix.
• Long-distance dispersion of Pu is mainly attributed to the transport of CsMPs.
But the worst of it is glass encapsulated “hot particles” of the corium material. The intensely hot explosions of the nuclear reactors vaporized the concrete which then condensed around particles directly blasted from the nuclear core fuel material to spray cooled microscopic glass beads containing cesium, uranium, perhaps even plutonium far beyond the blast site. The glass escapsulates and protects the contents from the environment thus prevents the corium from dissolving, which is what Japan assured the world should make the Fukushima nuclear disaster simply melt away and vanish. Out of sight, out of mind.
How much these glass beads are making way into air, water, wildlife, livestock, and foodstuffs for washoku? One bead hotspot lodged into the body assures cancer.
Radioactive Glass Beads May Tell the Terrible Tale of How the Fukushima Meltdown Unfolded
March 11, 2019
The microscopic particles unleashed by the plant’s explosions are also a potential environmental and health concern
What no one knew or expected was the fallout also contained bacteria-size glassy beads, with concentrations of radioactive cesium that were far higher than those in similar-size motes of tainted dust or dirt.
Since these particles were discovered in 2013, scientists have plucked them from soil samples and air filters throughout the contamination zone, including filters as far away as Tokyo.
The beads could pose an under-recognized heath risk, researchers say, because they are tiny enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs — and their glassy makeup means they may not easily dissolve or erode.
The untold impact on those who depend on the oceans is callously ignored by Japan, the IAEA, and the United States. The United States keeps pushing multiculturalism but it does not seem to be sincere. Why should others simply accept actions of other cultures without getting upset when the culturally bound actions are criminal in and to nature?
If it’s safe, dump it in Tokyo. We in the Pacific don’t want Japan’s nuclear wastewater
April 26, 2021
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/26/if-its-safe-dump-it-in-tokyo-we-in-the-pacific-dont-want-japans-nuclear-wastewater
Japan’s plans to discharge radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean is a callous act that would do catastrophic harm
To Pacific peoples, who have carried the disproportionate human cost of nuclearism in our region, this is yet another act of catastrophic and irreversible trans-boundary harm that our region has not consented to.
While Japan’s plan is for the water to be diluted first and discharged over the course of about 30 years, and the Japanese government has tried its hardest to convince the wider public of the treated water’s safety through the use of green mascots and backing from American scientists, Pacific peoples are once again calling it for what it is: an unjust act.
Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations in 1945, 315 nuclear tests have been undertaken across the Marshall Islands, Australia, Kiribati and Maohi Nui (French Polynesia). All of which were, at the time, described by nuclear nations to be scientifically sound and safe.
One would think that Japan’s proposal to dump nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean is something novel but there is a history of precedent. The shady practice was virtually a global norm in the past for the likes of nuclear nations like Japan, America and Europe.
Things came to a head in 1979, when Japan’s clandestine proposal to dump nuclear waste in neighbouring Northern Marianas was exposed. Japan severely underestimated a united furore from political leaders, non-governmental groups and grassroots activists from the Northern Marianas, Micronesia and the Pacific.
…Japan prepares once again to dump nuclear waste material into the Pacific Ocean.
We ask them to reflect on our joint nuclear legacy and listen to their Pacific neighbours. We are saying loudly and clearly: our ocean is not your dumping ground.
Here is the “green mascot” mentioned in the above article the Japanese government spent a lot of time and money crafting, believing a cartoon character will draw attention only to tritium as friendly cuteness while ignoring the other 64 radioactive substances still remaning in the ALPS filtered “treated” waste water.
Japan scraps mascot promoting Fukushima wastewater dump
April 15, 2021
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/15/japan-scraps-mascot-promoting-fukushima-wastewater-dump
‘Little Mr Tritium’ was meant to help win support for release of contaminated water into sea
— Promotional materials featuring a character who represented the radioactive hydrogen isotope tritium were pulled after one day
The Japanese government has been forced to quickly retire an animated character it had hoped would win support for its decision this week to release more than 1m tonnes of contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea.
Although the water will be treated before being discharged, it will still contain tritium, a radioactive hydrogen isotope represented on a government website by a cute fish-like creature with rosy cheeks.
The character’s appearance in an online flyer and video on the reconstruction agency’s website angered Fukushima residents.
Koreans have had a long relationship with the mountains and the seas surrounding the Korean peninsula, the West Sea, South Sea, and East Sea. The ingenuity of the Korean people has developed advanced aquaculture even admirable from outer space.
Green Harvest in South Korean Waters
NASA
April 23, 2021
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148215/green-harvest-in-south-korean-waters
With its warm temperatures and modest tides, Wando County’s shallow waters offer an ideal environment for raising kelp, laver, and sea mustard. Seaweed is often grown on ropes that are kept floating near the surface with buoys. This technique ensures that the seaweed stays close enough to the surface to get enough light during high tide but does not scrape against the bottom during low tide.
Seaweed has long been prized in South Korea. Traditionally, new mothers eat seaweed soup daily for a month after giving birth to aid recovery. The dish is also a common birthday food. South Korea is the world’s top exporter of Pyropia, a type of red seaweed often used to make nori for sushi.
About 90 percent of all the seaweed that humans consume globally is farmed. That may be beneficial for the environment. In comparison to other types of food production, seaweed farming has a light environmental footprint because it does not require fresh water or fertilizer. It also removes carbon from the atmosphere.
Korea has much to lose from callous Japanese and American decision to dump the Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, calling Koreans to protest strongly to protect the shared natural resource.
Fishermen Stage Maritime Demonstrations to Protest Japan’s Fukushima Decision
April 19, 2021
http://koreabizwire.com/s-korean-civic-group-slams-japans-fukushima-decision-as-criminal-act/187671
— South Korean fishermen stage a maritime demonstration in the sea off Yeosu, southwestern South Korea, on April 19, 2021, to protest against Japan’s decision to release contaminated water into the ocean. (Yonhap)
Fishermen in S. Korea hold sea protest against Japan’s radioactive water discharge
https://youtu.be/cprtkTgmrpc
Japan: UN experts ‘deeply disappointed’ by decision to discharge Fukushima water
https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/04/1089852
“A first application ALPS failed to clean the water below regulatory levels and there are no guarantees that a second treatment will succeed”, they said, adding that the technology did not remove radioactive tritium or carbon-14.
Noting that the water may contain quantities of radioactive carbon-14, as well as other radioactive isotopes, the independent experts raised their concerns with the Japanese Government that discharging radioactive water to the Pacific Ocean threatens the health of people and planet.
Is the East Sea safe from Fukushima?
The safety of Korean seafood is a big question after Japan contaminated the environment radioactively.
The Fukushima radioactive contamination is polluting the Pacific Ocean with 300 tons leaking daily through uncontained underground seepage the icewall technology Japan touted was unable to contain. With the recent two large 2021 aftershocks near Fukushima, new cracks in the Fukushima nuclear plant concrete has increased the rate of leakage. Now on top of that, the still contaminated one million tons of waste water in holding tanks will be released for sake of “cost effective” disposal.
Just beyond words how upsetting it is that Japan messed up its own fisheries and now will affect neighbors. Why is Japan really trying to hell spawn Godzilla (going so far as to build a lifesized theme park statue shrine now to summon born from radiation offerings Godzilla-kami)?
However, there is some hope that the East Sea is shielding the Korean Peninsula against radioactive contamination that is mostly carried out to sea to North America. Of course, it will eventually recirculate, but much more diluted.
The East Sea ocean floor is raised compared to the Pacific Ocean basin that starts on the east coast of Japan where Fukushima is positioned.
During the last Ice Age, the West (Yellow) Sea was dry land and the East Sea a large semi-frozen lake. Along with the island of Japan, this sea shelf shields the East Sea from Fukushima.
From the north, the Kuril Islands help carry a cold water current from the Arctic Ocean. From the south, the Korean Strait carries the warm water from the equator. The collision of these two cold and warm currents provides ideal conditions for a unique variety of fish in the shallower East Sea. Such conditions make Korean seafood the best tasting in the world.
For these reasons, all is not hopeless. So, for a while longer, Korean fisheries and seafood remain drastically less affected as the East Sea dynamics itself provides an oasis, a nuclear refugium from Fukushima radioactive contamination.
Based on oceanography science, Korean seafood caught in Korean waters should still be safe to eat, being the last waters connected to the Pacific Ocean to be affected despite the perpetual misfortune of Japan being nearby.
한국산 Korean fish and jeotgal traditions will remain safe a while longer to continue enjoying, but eventually will wind up becoming contaminated by Japan’s Fukushima radioactive toxic wastewater.
- The final version of the ocean current map of the East Sea integrating all expert comments, scientific results from current measurements, and scientific knowledge of oceanographers from a variety of journal articles based on in-situ current measurements.
- Bathymetry in the seas around Korea, where the colors represent water depths and the red box represents the study area of the East Sea.
Japan! Move the ‘Sea of Japan’ back to the original location, on the east coast of Japan replacing the ‘Pacific Ocean’ name. You broke it so take claim of what you messed up!
大日本海 = Big Japan Sea, the original Sea of Japan = Pacific Ocean.
The original naming was on the east coast of Japan, which Meiji Japan boldly marked in maps claiming the Pacific Ocean, not the East Sea also named Sea of Joseon and Sea of Korea at the time.
