China’s customs agency says the plan to discharge treated nuclear-contaminated water from the 2011 disaster in Fukushima into the sea fails to fully reflect expert opinions, with authorities vowing to take all necessary measures to ensure consumer safety.
  • freagleEnglish
    141·
    1 year ago

    What a WILD framing. “Anger over Fukushima” as opposed to “doing whatever it can to prevent public health issues from nuclear waste”. Shameful writing.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OPEnglish
      22·
      1 year ago

      Right, I would certainly want my government to do all it can to prevent food sourced in waters contaminated by nuclear waste making it to my country. Little chance of that I suspect though.

  • BloopsEnglish
    42·
    1 year ago

    “100–500 petabecquerels (PBq) of iodine-131 and 6–20 PBq of caesium-137” were released to the atmosphere during the initial meltdown according to Wikipedia/the UN. A petabecquerel is 1015 becquerels, a short-scale quadrillion becquerels, or “a thousand trillion” for journalists who are averse to using any unit larger than a trillion. Hiroshima released 1024 Bq of fission products into the atmosphere, and the world proceeded to blow up countless nukes after that. Yet, we don’t all have cancerous tumors growing all over us. It’s very easy to release enough radioactive material to kill the planet several times over - it’s just very hard to get that to everyone in a concentration that would actually do it. Fukushima Daiichi still only has one confirmed cancer death.

    Fukushima Daiichi releases 22 trillion becquerels of tritium water annually, compared to the meltdown release of over 100,000 trillion becquerels of iodine and cesium. China itself actually has a power plant that releases more radiation than Japan is planning. Hongyanhe power plant is also located on the coast, yet the Chinese are happy to eat Dalian seafood.

    The water being discharged will have a concentration of 1,500 becquerels per liter compared to Japanese limits of 60,000 Bq/L and WHO drinking water standards of 10,000 Bq/L. 60,000 Bq/L would expose you to 1 milisievert if you drink two liters of this stuff every day for a year, which is a bit under the amount of radiation flight attendants receive. 1,500 becquerels is basically nothing then. However, we won’t be drinking it anyway because the dilution is being done with cheap, easily accessible seawater instead of freshwater.

    My conclusion is that this is just politicking. Honestly, I think it’s irresponsible to fearmonger about it since that contributes to the hugely outsized fear nuclear energy gets, making it harder to fight against climate change.