Radioactive Pollution Dilution – the US Backs Japan Dumping Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Waste Water?

Say it ain’t so Joe! The United States is thus far backing the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency who claimed as one of the mouthpieces of the Nuclear industry that it would see that the dumping of Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Waste Water into the Pacific ocean wouldn’t hurt human health and the environment. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said that Japan’s solution was both “technically feasible and in line with international practice.”

This, laughable promise in the eyes of many critics – including China, South Korea and US client state Taiwan – who decried Japan’s announcement today that it would conduct allegedly controlled releases of potentially cancer-causing ionized water that are expected to last for three decades into the Pacific ocean The whole ongoing life-threatening Fukushima Nuclear Disaster was caused, of course, by Tokyo Electric Power Company’s utter inability to monitor, and safely operate the now infamous plant, which melted down. This is not exactly a credible witness for the defense in our view.

“We thank Japan for its transparent efforts in its decision to dispose of the treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi site,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter, according to Bloomberg. Maybe he should change his name to Blinders?

Tokyo Electric Power uses water to keep fuel and debris cool at the Fukushima disaster site, and fresh groundwater flows in daily and becomes contaminated. That water is pumped out and cleaned in a process that – it’s claimed – removes most of the radioactive elements except for tritium, aka hydrogen-3. Then it’s stored in one of ~1,000 tanks at the site, which will be full by mid-2022. Tritium has health risks if it is ingested, inhaled, or contacts an open wound. A health consequence from internal exposure to tritium is an elevated risk of developing cancer, but no deaths from the ongoing disaster have been reported. About 18,500 people died due to the earthquake and tsunami that caused the original reactor meltdown.

“Despite doubts and opposition from home and abroad, Japan has unilaterally decided to release the Fukushima nuclear wastewater into the sea before exhausting all safe ways of disposal and without fully consulting with neighboring countries and the international community,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.