Japan’s Latest Export: Radioactive Nuclear Waste
As mentioned a few weeks ago, Japanese authorities have approved dumping nearly one million tons of treated radioactive waste water from its Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean in Spring. (Spring begins March 20.) This action will endanger some of the world’s largest Pacific fisheries and the global ecology.
According to a report in British newspaper The Guardian on February 14, Fukushima wastewater is stored in over 1,000 tanks that officials say need to be removed Spring 2023 in order for the plant to be decommissioned, a process still expected to take 30 to 40 years.
The Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident in 2011 was the world’s largest nuclear accident since the Soviet Union Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The Fukushima-Daiichi event released large quantities of radiation into the atmosphere. The release of even treated radioactive waste water is controversial, as it includes the radioactive isotope tritium which is a cause of cancer, infertility and birth defects in human beings. The isotope also destroys coral reefs and thereby fish hatcheries. It’s a hat trick: tritium also becomes absorbed into the food chain.
One question is, why an island nation would want to poison the waters that surround it? But it doesn’t end with Japan. According to scientists, tritium from Japanese waters will…
