1y ago

Japanese ministers eat Fukushima fish to show it's safe after nuclear plant wastewater is discharged

apnews.com Japanese ministers eat Fukushima fish to show it's safe after nuclear plant wastewater is discharged

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and three Cabinet ministers have eaten Fukushima fish sashimi at a lunch meeting in an apparent effort to show that fish is safe following the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and three Cabinet ministers ate Fukushima fish sashimi at a lunch meeting Wednesday, in an apparent effort to show that fish is safe following the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that began last week.

Kishida and the three ministers had sashimi of flounder, octopus and sea bass, caught off the Fukushima coast after the water release, along with vegetables, fruits and a bowl of rice that were harvested in the prefecture, Economy and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who was at the meeting, told reporters.

The release of the treated wastewater into the ocean, which began Thursday and is expected to continue for decades, has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and by neighboring countries. China immediately banned all imports of Japanese seafood in response. In South Korea, thousands of people joined rallies over the weekend to condemn the discharge.

All seawater and fish sampling data since the release have been way below set safety limits.

41 comments

I am so tired of hearing about this.
If the media did one tenth the pearl clutching concern for the shit that is actually destroying the environment, the dumping of gigatons of co2 into the atmosphere every fucking year, we may have done something about it.
- This entire Fukushima waste water thing is just the modern plastic straw. Dumping it isn’t great, but fuck, there’s like three billion other things we should be really worried about more when it comes to the environment.
  The media’s priorities on particular issues is fucked sometimes.
  
  It's been amplified to a considerable degree due to regional geopolitics, unfortunately.
  
  While it isn't great it isn't terrible either. It just is. Also the media wouldn't have to force scientists and responsible politicians to explain it this non-issue over and over if the public finally understood that Fukushima disaster is hardly a goddamn disaster. The moronic public opinion in this particular case did way more harm than the actual accident.

It’s funny cuz I thought they’ve been doing this all along, what have they been doing until now?
- They have been treating the waste water for years to remove 99%+ of the contamination before releasing it.
  
  Unacceptable

Simpsons already did it

Im gonna smoke one cigarette to prove they don't cause cancer.
- There's less radiation in this water than a banana. A cigarette is not comparable in health risk.
  
  Well I agree but I was simply pointing out how meaningless the gesture is even if it were harmful

Ah yes, the Devil's Milkshake comes to Tokyō.

Not in the news is that after that PR stunt, he went straight to the hospital to get his stomach pumped out.
(No, I’m not serious)

the guy that pushed for lead in fuel knew it caused problems and exposed himself to prove it's safe
- The difference is that this actually is safe.
  See, the radiation released is actually lower than the background radiation of standard ocean water, because the ocean is full of naturally occurring uranium oxide. It's water-soluble.
  Anyway, the tritium in the discharge water is diluted so much that it will be a non-issue. This just gets headlines because people are kind of stupid when it comes to the scary radiation word, as if you weren't bathing in ionizing radiation right this very second from all the natural sources around you.
  You have gamma from cosmic rays, alpha and beta emitters in the soil, and a dozen other sources of radiation around you.
  
  You have gamma from cosmic rays, alpha and beta emitters in the soil, and a dozen other sources of radiation around you.
  You are radioactive, through Carbon-14 that you get from your diet and everything else. Measuring that radioactivity is how carbon dating works.
  
  Thank you, genuinely.
  
  To add on what you're saying, the most dangerous radiation we're exposed to in our day to day life is UV from the sun. I've never managed to get people to understand that though.

Okay now swim in a pool of the treated water?
- Sure. No problem.
  A little info.
  If you drank nothing but the released water (forget about the salt for a while), so 2L of this water every day for a year, you would receive a radiation dose of 4 mili-rem.
  To put that into perspective. Every year humans receive 30 mili-rem from background radiation exposure.
  
  This is the most frustrating thing because posts like the one you replied to get posted constantly, and debunked constantly as you and other commenters nicely did. Yet they never come back to say, "Thanks for the correction!" or edit their comments to remove the false information. They just go on to repeat the same tripe elsewhere.
  
  Is there non-radioactive metal content?
- You can safely swim in the pool of an operational reactor, the ocean near Fukushima is perfectly safe.
  https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
  
  You can safely swim in the pool of an operational reactor
  Besides the acute lead poisoning from being shot apparently.

41 comments