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The Fukushima nuclear plant will start releasing treated wastewater. Here’s what you need to know.

The Canadian Press, Mari Yamaguchi, The Associated Press 23 Aug 23,

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese officials plan to start discharging treated radioactive wastewater from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, a contentious step more than 12 years after a massive earthquake and tsunami set off a battle against ever-increasing amounts of radioactive water at the plant.

The government and plant operator say the release is an unavoidable part of its decommissioning and will be safely carried out, but the plan faces opposition in and outside Japan. Here is a look at the controversy.

WHY IS THERE SO MUCH WASTEWATER?

The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant’s cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt. Highly contaminated cooling water applied to the damaged reactors has leaked continuously to building basements and mixed with groundwater.

The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), has taken steps to limit the amount of groundwater and rainwater entering the reactor area, and has reduced the increase in contaminated water to about 100 tons a day, 1/5 of the initial amount. The water is collected and partly recycled as cooling water after treatment, with the rest stored in around 1,000 tanks, which are already filled to 98% of their 1.37 million-ton capacity.

WHY IS TEPCO RELEASING THE WATER NOW?

The government and TEPCO say they need to make room for the plant’s decommissioning and prevent accidental leaks from the tanks.

Japan has obtained support from the International Atomic Energy Agency to improve the transparency and credibility of the release and ensure it meets international safety standards. The government has also stepped up a campaign promoting the plan’s safety at home and through diplomatic channels.

WHAT’S IN THE TREATED WATER’?

The water is being treated by what’s called an Advanced Liquid Processing System, which can reduce the amounts of more than 60 selected radionuclides to government-set releasable levels, except for tritium, which officials say is safe for humans if consumed in small amounts.

About 70% of the water held in the tanks still contains cesium, strontium, carbon-14 and other radionuclides exceeding government-set levels. It will be retreated until the concentrations meet those limits, then diluted by more than 100 times its volume of seawater before it is released. That will bring it way below international safety limits, but its radioactivity won’t be zero.

HOW SAFE IS IT?

IAEA concluded in a report that the plan, if conducted as designed, will have negligible impact on the environment and human health. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi visited the plant and said he was satisfied with preparations.

Japan’s government says the release of tritium into the sea is a routine practice by nuclear plants around the world and that the amount will be several times lower than from plants in China and South Korea.

Scientists generally support the IAEA’s conclusion, while some call for more attention to dozens of low-dose radionuclides that remain in the water, saying data on their long-term effects on the environment and marine life are insufficient.

HOW WILL IT BE RELEASED?

TEPCO executive Junichi Matsumoto says the release will begin with the least radioactive water to ensure safety. After samples are analyzed in final testing, the water will be transported through a thin black pipe to a coastal area where it will be diluted with hundreds of times its volume of seawater.

The diluted water will enter an undersea tunnel and be released a few minutes later from a point 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) off the coast. The release will be gradual and will continue for decades until the decommissioning of the plant is finished, TEPCO officials say. Matsumoto said the slow release will further reduce the environmental impact.

Final preparation for the release began Tuesday when just 1 ton of water was sent for dilution with 1,200 tons of seawater, and the mixture was to be kept in the primary pool for two days for final sampling to ensure safety, Matsumoto said. A batch of 460 tons will be sent to the mixing pool Thursday for the actual discharge.

The company plans to release 31,200 tons of treated water by the end of March 2024, which would empty only 10 tanks because of the continued production of wastewater at the plant. The pace will later pick up.

WHY ARE PEOPLE WORRIED?

Fukushima’s badly hit fisheries, tourism and economy are still recovering from the disaster. Fisheries groups worry about a further damage to the reputation of their seafood. Fukushima’s current catch is only about one-fifth its pre-disaster level due to a decline in the fishing population and smaller catch sizes.

The head of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives, Masanobu Sakamoto, said on Monday that “scientific safety and the sense of safety are different.”

Groups in South Korea and China have also raised concerns, turning the release into a political and diplomatic issue. China has stepped up radiation testing of fishery and agricultural products from Fukushima and nine other prefectures, halting exports at customs for weeks, Fisheries Agency officials say.

WHAT IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG?

The Japanese government says potential risks from the release of treated water are limited to reputational damage resulting from rumors, rather than scientific study. It has allocated 80 billion yen ($550 million) to support fisheries and seafood processing and combat potential reputation damage. TEPCO has also promised to deal with reputational damage claims.

August 24, 2023 Posted by | Fukushima continuing | Leave a comment

More nuclear challenges await Japan after Fukushima water release

By Kiyoshi Takenaka, TOKYO, Aug 24 (Reuters)  https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/more-nuclear-challenges-await-japan-after-fukushima-water-release-2023-08-24/ Twelve years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan has started to release treated radioactive water into the sea, a key step in the process of decommissioning the stricken plant, but much tougher tasks lie ahead, such as molten fuel removal.

Here are the challenges facing the government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) (9501.T) as they try to draw a line by the middle of the century under the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chornobyl.

MOLTEN FUEL REMOVAL

Tepco has described the effort to remove highly radioactive fuel debris from reactor cores as an “unprecedented and difficult challenge never attempted anywhere in the world”.

Trial-based retrieval at the No.2 reactor, the first at the plant to go through such a step, has been delayed twice from an initially scheduled date of 2021, and is now set for a six-month period starting in October.

At Three Mile Island (TMI), the U.S. nuclear plant in Pennsylvania that partly melted down in 1979 after a failure, fuel debris was kept under water during retrieval work, providing a shield against radiation.

That was the worst nuclear plant accident before the 1986 Chornobyl tragedy in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union.

Japan and Tepco plan to remove molten fuel while it is exposed to air because it is difficult to fill the badly damaged reactor cores with water.

But that will also make it hard to protect workers and retrieval gear from strong radiation.

The Fukushima plant suffered triple meltdowns, compared to the single fuel core meltdown at Three Mile Island, which means the debris retrieval operation will be much larger and more complicated this time around.

The retrieval will be done by a remotely controlled, 22-metre-long (72-foot) robot arm. The initial stage aims to extract only a few grammes of fuel debris, although the total molten fuel at the plant is estimated to be 880 metric tonnes.

RADIOACTIVE SOIL

The 2011 accident spewed radiation into the air, which eventually contaminated the soil. Part of that tainted soil is stored at an interim site more than four times as big as New York’s Central Park.

But the law requires the soil stored at the interim site, located next to the tsunami-wrecked power plant, to be moved out of Fukushima within 30 years from when it began operating in 2015.

More than a quarter of that interval has elapsed with no clear sign the government is nearer to securing permanent storage, though the environment ministry says the earliest the search for specific locations will start is 2025.

BALLOONING COSTS

In 2016, the government doubled to 21.5 trillion yen ($148.60 billion) its estimate of the costs of responding to the Fukushima disaster, including compensation, decommissioning and decontamination efforts.

About 12.1 trillion yen had been spent on such activities by March 2022, Japan’s audit panel, which reviews government expenditures, has said.

That represents an expenditure of more than half of the government’s estimate, even before really tough tasks such as fuel debris retrieval have begun, in turns raising concerns about cost overruns.

Tepco’s continuing payouts to the victims hits its bottom line.

In 2019, a private think tank, the Japan Center for Economic Research, said compensation, decommissioning and decontamination costs were expected to reach 41 trillion yen in a scenario in which Fukushima water was diluted and discharged into the sea.

($1 = 144.6800 yen)

August 24, 2023 Posted by | Japan, politics | Leave a comment

Japan’s nuclear wastewater – should we be worried?

August 22, 2023  https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/leaders/2023/08/945792/nst-leader-japans-nuclear-wastewater

FUKUSHIMA is a dreaded word in the region because what happens there doesn’t stay there. There in Japan on March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami, in that order, knocked out the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant, releasing untreated radioactive water into the sea.

Given the state of the nuclear plant technology then — or even now — there wasn’t the time for the radioactive elements to self-destruct. The human mind, including the Japanese ones, for some reason didn’t perceive that calamities can happen all at once.

The Fukushima disaster is such a tale of instantaneous conjunction of calamities. On a visit to the disaster zone on Sunday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was quoted by news agency AFP as saying that he was refraining from “commenting on a concrete timing of the release into the ocean at this point in time”, leaving ample room for a prime ministerial hint that it will be soon.

Some 500 Olympic-size swimming pools of wastewater, accumulated over 12 years after the disaster, are expected to be released into the Pacific Ocean. The fact that it would be a slow release over 10 years registered no effect in the region’s dread meter.

The region is on dread-watch, but much of it is coated with diplomatic niceties. China has been the most vociferous in opposing the release of the wastewater into the ocean. In China, dread comes mixed with geopolitical anger, given that Tokyo is a tango partner of Washington.

If a taste of Chinese animus is needed, here is one quote from a Beijing official, gleefully circulated by the Western media: Japan is treating the sea as its sewer. An interesting take, we must say, now that all nations without exception are treating the seas as their sewer.

How many marine lives were destroyed or how many people have ingested radioactive materials through seafood after the accident 12 years ago is hard to tell. Nuclear literature tells us if the water isn’t treated properly, dangerous isotopes can have devastating effects, including DNA-damaging ones. Should we fear? Yes and no. Start with yes.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the operator of the crippled nuclear plant, and Japanese regulators stand accused of negligence, notwithstanding the earthquake and tsunami. Now that Tepco and the government are saying the 1.34 million tonnes of wastewater planned to be released into the Pacific Ocean is safe, many in Japan don’t believe them. Both are victims of trust deficit.

Kishida, though he wasn’t prime minister when disaster struck in 2011, is in need of reputation management advice. Not just to repair the trust deficit at home, but also abroad.

China has banned seafood from Fukushima and considering a wider ban. Others in the region are beginning to be infected by China’s isotope fear, not because of Beijing’s geopolitics, but because of the nightmarish outcome of radioactive contamination. If the dread grows, it will cripple more than Fukushima.

Now for the no, our second response to Japan’s release of the treated wastewater into the ocean. The world shouldn’t fear because the Japanese guarantee that the dangerous radioactive elements have been filtered out and comes stamped with the approval of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency

Unless, of course, if the world has reasons to believe that the IAEA, too, comes branded with a trust deficit.

August 23, 2023 Posted by | Fukushima continuing | Leave a comment

Japanese fishing industry leader is “greatly concerned” over the pending disharge of Fukushima radioactive water into the ocean.

 The leader of a Japanese fisheries industry group told officials on Monday
he was “greatly concerned” about the discharge of treated radioactive water
set to be released into the sea from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant.

The government is expected to decide soon, perhaps within days, when to
start releasing the water, equivalent to the contents of 500 Olympic-size
swimming pools, despite objections at home and abroad to the plan.

 Reuters 21st Aug 2023

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-pm-kishida-meet-with-fishermens-group-monday-afternoon-jiji-2023-08-21/

August 23, 2023 Posted by | Japan, oceans | Leave a comment

Poisoning the planet

Radioactive water dump is just latest example our reckless destruction of habitat

By Linda Pentz Gunter, 20 Aug 23, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/08/20/poisoning-the-planet/

Much has been made — and rightly so — about the potential impact on human health and the Japanese fishing industry if Japan moves forward with its proposal to dump 1.2 million cubic meters — that’s 1.3 million tons —of radioactively contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant site.

Unfortunately, this looks likely to happen sometime this month or next despite the worldwide outcry. But when I say “happen”, that rather suggests a one-off dump. Instead, the discharge of these liquid nuclear wastes could go on for at least 17 years according to the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, but likely longer as decommissioning work at the site is expected to take at least 30-40 years.

It is perfectly right and reasonable that the Japanese fishing community sees its livelihood under threat from this proposal. Indeed, it has already taken a hit, as imports of Japanese fish stock to South Korea were down by 30% in May, before the dumping even began. This was clearly driven by jitters around the on-going safety of Japanese fish supplies once those radioactive discharges get underway.

And Pacific Island nations, along with an international team of scientific experts, have equally decried the plan as premature, unnecessary and in need of far greater confidence and further study before such discharges are executed, if ever.

But there is a greater moral issue here, one that speaks to humankind’s reckless and selfish behavior on planet Earth ever since mechanization and the various so-called industrial revolutions began.

For almost three centuries in the developed world, we have continuously and wantonly destroyed vast areas of precious habitat for numerous species. We have clear cut forests, sliced the tops off mountains, broken open the earth to mine minerals, exploded atomic weapons, spewed mercury and carbon into our air, drilled for oil, sprayed pesticides at will and filled the oceans with plastics, to name just a few environmental atrocities.

The toxic mess these activities leave behind has been dumped into rivers, streams, lakes and oceans, or on the lands where the less influential and powerful amongst us live — in the United States almost always in communities of color or on Native American reservations.

One of the worst offenders on this list is nuclear waste. In keeping with our heedless irresponsibility we have kept making lethal radioactive waste without the slightest idea how to safely manage or store it for the longterm. For years, barrels of the stuff were dumped into the sea, until a 1994 amendment to the London Dumping Convention, put an end to it.

But of course the nuclear industry found a way around this. Routine liquid discharges through a pipe circumvented this law. Institutions such as the LaHague reprocessing site on the northern French coast, have discharged radioactive liquids (and gases) for decades. Didier Anger, the now retired expert activist on the environmental crimes at La Hague, uses this history to warn us urgently and eloquently of the folly of discharging nuclear waste into our oceans.

At times, the liquid wastes from La Hague, measured at the discharge point by vigilant groups such as Greenpeace, could have been classified as high-level radioactive waste that would normally require a deep geological repository. 

As we approach the moment when radioactive liquids are once more poured into the sea, this time in Japan, imposing a toxic burden on the creatures who are already struggling to survive there, we must ask whether human beings have some sort of divine right of kings to trash the habitat of other living things? 

The answer should surely be ‘no’. That humans can generate a radioactive mess and “dispose” of it into some other creatures’ habitat, poisoning their environment is, frankly, both arrogant and abhorrent.

We have already done this everywhere and it has come with a terrible price to other creatures as well as to ourselves. The destruction and contamination of habitat has led to mass extinctions. The US has lost three billion birds since 1970. That’s one in four birds. We may have thought the birds were back in abundance during the start of the covid pandemic, but that was just us hearing what’s left of them more clearly, in the quiet of lockdown.

Bees, who perform around 80% of all pollination, are dying out and hives collapsing, all due to human activities. These include pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution, and, of course, the climate crisis.

Absent these and other essential members of the web of life, our own extinction is not far behind.

We need to stop this behavior and we need to stop it now. We should do it not only for ourselves but for the countless innocent creatures who should not be expected to offer up their homes as our dustbins.

Loading up the Pacific Ocean with liquid radioactive waste — whether it dilutes and disperses or not — is a crime of immorality representative of so many that have come before. If we are truly to change our plundering, polluting and profligate ways, banning the radioactive water dump at Fukushima would be an excellent place to start.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International. 

August 21, 2023 Posted by | environment, Japan, oceans, Religion and ethics, wastes | Leave a comment

Japan’s nuclear plants are short of storage for spent fuel. A remote town could have the solution.

Chugoku Electric’s plan to build a nuclear power plant in Kaminoseki has been stalled for more than a decade since the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, delaying subsidies for the remote town, whose population is aging and shrinking.

“The town will only get poorer if we just keep waiting,” Kaminoseki Mayor Tetsuo Nishi – “We should do whatever is available now.”

ByMARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press,  https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/japans-nuclear-plants-short-storage-spent-fuel-remote-102373016 August 19, 2023

TOKYO — A Japanese town said Friday it has agreed to a geological study to determine its suitability as an interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel.

Kaminoseki, a small town in the southwestern prefecture of Yamaguchi, said it would accept the offer of a survey by Chugoku Electric Power Co., one of two major utility operators, along with Kansai Electric Power Co., whose spent fuel storage pools are almost full.

The Japanese government is promoting the greater use of nuclear power as a low-carbon energy source, but the country’s nuclear plants are running out of storage capacity.

The problem stems from Japan’s stalled nuclear fuel recycling program to reprocess plutonium from spent fuel for reuse. The government has continued to pursue the program, despite serious technical setbacks. A plutonium-burning Monju reactor failed and is being decommissioned, while the launch of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant in northern Japan has been delayed for almost 30 years.

After the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011, many reactors were temporarily taken offline and their restarts delayed, helping to reduce the spent fuel stockpile.

However, when Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government decided to reverse a phaseout and maximize nuclear power as clean energy, concerns over the lack of storage space were rekindled.

Earlier this month, Chugoku put forward a proposal to build a storage facility jointly with Kansai Electric, but the plan was met by angry protests from residents, who surrounded the mayor and yelled at him.

Chugoku Electric’s plan to build a nuclear power plant in Kaminoseki has been stalled for more than a decade since the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, delaying subsidies for the remote town, whose population is aging and shrinking.

“The town will only get poorer if we just keep waiting,” Kaminoseki Mayor Tetsuo Nishi told a televised news conference Friday. “We should do whatever is available now.”

Kansai Electric, Japan’s largest nuclear plant operator, is urgently seeking additional storage for spent fuel: the cooling pools at its plants are more than 80% full. The company pledged to find a potential interim storage site by the end of this year.

About 19,000 tons of spent fuel, a byproduct of nuclear power generation, is stored at power plants across Japan, taking up about 80% of their storage capacity, according to the economy and industry ministry.

The continuation of spent fuel reprocessing program and the delay have only added to Japan’s already large plutonium stockpile, raising international concern. Japan also lacks a final repository for high-level nuclear waste.

An intermediate facility is designed to keep nuclear spent fuel in dry casks for decades until it is moved to a reprocessing or to a final repository. Experts say it is a much safer option than keeping it in uncovered cooling pools at their plants.

If the storage is actually built, it will be the second such facility in Japan. The only other one is in Mutsu, near Rokkasho, which is reserved for Tokyo Electric Power Co. and a smaller utility.

August 20, 2023 Posted by | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

Japan mothers’ group fears Fukushima water release could revive health concerns

By Kiyoshi Takenaka, Akiko Okamoto and Tom Bateman, August 18, 2023

IWAKI, Japan, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Waves crashing on a Japanese beach lashed a man and a woman wearing waders and hats as they demonstrated the use of a blue bucket to scoop some of the liquid into large plastic containers to be taken away and tested for radiation.

Members of a group that tracks such levels in food and seawater, they fear Japan’s plans to release treated radioactive water into the sea near the Fukushima nuclear plant could stir an anxiety among residents reminiscent of the 2011 disaster.

“The people of Fukushima endured the risks for the last 12 years and have confirmed the radiation level has dropped,” said Ai Kimura, director of non-profit group Mothers’ Radiation Lab Fukushima, also known as Tarachine.

“But if radioactive materials are released into the ocean now, it will again bring back the tragedy of 12 years ago,” she added, speaking at the lab in the city of Iwaki, 50 km (30 miles) south of the power plant.

Japan is preparing this summer to start discharging into the Pacific more than a million tons of water from the tsunami-crippled power plant, but has not yet revealed the date.

Although the government and an international nuclear regulator say the plan is safe, it has alarmed neighbours, particularly China, and the regional fisheries industry.

Tarachine comprises 13 members – mostly mothers – who had no experience in radiology when they started, but were taught by scientists and doctors how to run tests and keep records.

After losing a job cooking school lunches in the wake of the disaster, Kimura joined the group in 2014 and taught herself how to measure radiation, in hopes of protecting her daughters, who were teenagers at the time, as well as others.

Now she says she wants more dialogue between the government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (9501.T) on one side, and citizens, fishermen and others on the other, to allay concerns over safety and other fears.

“Since the ocean has no walls … and what’s been released can’t be taken back, this issue is not only for Fukushima or for Japan to give consideration to, but for the whole world,” Kimura added.

…………… Kimura’s group vowed to continue its activities after the release begins.

“We will keep on providing data, so that fathers and mothers can decide for themselves, and children can also decide, when they grow up, whether to eat Fukushima fish or whether to go swimming in the sea,” Kimura said.

Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka, Akiko Okamoto and Tom Bateman; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Clarence Fernandez  https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-mothers-group-fears-fukushima-water-release-could-revive-health-concerns-2023-08-17/

August 19, 2023 Posted by | health, Japan | Leave a comment

Agency to test for tritium in fish after Fukushima water discharge

The Fisheries Agency will conduct daily checks of tritium levels in fish
caught off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture after treated water from the
Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is released into the ocean.

The agency announced on Aug. 10 that the results of the checks would be released two
days later. The study will continue for about a month after the start of
the discharge of water treated after being contaminated with radiation
within the plant grounds.

The government plans to begin releasing the
water, which has accumulated at the crippled plant for more than a decade
and is nearing the capacity of storage tanks on the site, later this
summer. China has been especially virulent in opposing the discharge of the
treated water due to environmental concerns. The results of the daily
checks will be released in Japanese and English by the Fisheries Agency.

Asahi Shimbun 11th Aug 2023

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14979387

August 13, 2023 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, oceans | Leave a comment

Nippon Life bans investments in nuclear arms firms, tobacco companies

The company’s ESG investment list already excludes cluster munitions and landmine manufacturers and coal power programs.

By Kenneth Araullo, Aug 10, 2023
 https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/asia/news/life-insurance/nippon-life-bans-investments-in-nuclear-arms-firms-tobacco-companies-455734.aspx

Nippon Life, Japan’s largest life insurer, will not invest in nuclear weapons manufacturers as part of its new environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policy.

In addition to nuclear arms, tobacco-related companies – a first for a major insurer in the country – and palm-oil related businesses are also off its investment list. Nippon Life’s exclusion list already includes manufacturers of inhumane weapons like cluster munitions and landmines, in addition to coal-fired power generation programs.

With this change, Nippon Life is affirming its commitment to nuclear disarmament and abolition, an idea that is beginning to see huge strides ever since the G7 leaders’ “Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament.” According to The Mainichi, Nippon Life decided that it should “clarify a corporate policy of not investing in or financing nuclear weapons manufacturers, based on the mission of the life insurance business and its public nature.”

In addition to Nippon Life, Dai-ichi Life already bans investments or loans to nuclear arms firms; this makes two of the largest insurers in the country now following the same ESG policy regarding such weapons.

Elsewhere, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has started its probe into four nonlife insurers which were alleged to have taken part in price fixing activities.

August 11, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, Japan | Leave a comment

As Japan set to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater in late August, Japanese nuclear expert vows to ‘fight it to the end’

Global Times, By  Xu Keyue, Aug 07, 2023 

As mainstream Japanese media revealed that Tokyo could start to dump the nuclear-contaminated wastewater as early as the end this month after the trilateral US-Japan-South Korea summit, observers and the wider public in China, Japan and South Korea reiterated their opposition to the irresponsible move with a Japanese nuclear expert stating that they would continue to protest against the plan.

“We plan to fight it to the end. We are planning to hold a big gathering in front of the prime minister’s office on August 18 and we plan to make a petition and submit signatures,” Hideyuki Ban, a Japanese nuclear expert and co-director of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (CNIC), told the Global Times on Monday.

According to Japanese media outlet Asahi Shimbun, the Japanese government has entered into coordination to determine the wastewater release timing after the summit with the US and South Korea scheduled for August 18. After Prime Minister Fumio Kishida returns from the US, he will hold a ministerial meeting and make a decision over the dumping of contaminated wastewater.

Asahi cited several officials as saying that the dumping is estimated to begin as early as the end of August. The report claimed that Kishida is expected to explain “the safety of the treated water, its scientific basis, and measures to be taken after the release” to the two leaders of the US and South Korea to gain their understanding.

But Ban believes if the contaminated wastewater is dumped in late August, it is the Japanese government that would force the plan without caring for the concerns and opposition from fisheries and the relevant personnel………………………………….

As many parties in Japan and other countries including China oppose the wastewater dumping plan, the Japanese government must be thinking that it will at least get the consent of Seoul and Washington and if the three reach a consensus over the issue during the summit, it is expected to help Tokyo press ahead with its arbitrary plan, Ban pointed out.

Anonymous Japanese officials in the prime minister’s office were quoted by Asahi as saying that they believe since some offshore trawling will commence off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture in September, the government hopes to avoid starting the release after the fishing season has begun. For this reason, it is assumed that the dumping will start around the end of August, Asahi reported.  https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202308/1295820.shtml

August 9, 2023 Posted by | Japan, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Counting the dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki

This is a very long, well-researched, and amply illustrated article. Below are a few snatches to give a sense of the work involved in seeking an answer to this question.

Bulletin, By Alex Wellerstein, August 4, 2020

How many people died as a result of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

There is one thing that everyone who has tackled this question has agreed upon: The answer is probably fundamentally unknowable. The indiscriminate damage inflicted upon the cities, coupled with the existing disruptions of the wartime Japanese home front, means that any precise reckoning is never going to be achieved.

Earliest estimates……………………………………………………………………………………….

Occupation estimates………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. One of the most useful sources they consulted was also one of the most grim: schools and schoolchildren, which kept meticulous attendance records. Not only were there good records, but “the headmasters in many instances had made earnest efforts to trace families by letter, messenger, or personal contact.” Even better, the researchers found that many of the children were not in their classrooms at the time of the bombing, but had been detailed into “patriotic work parties” throughout the city, working in factories or working on firebreaks. So this provided data for many different distances from the bombing, and different types of structures. In this tragic fashion, the most vulnerable of those who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki played a key role in establishing the total death counts…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Japanese-led reconsiderations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

So what numbers should one use?

Given all of the above, and the disagreements about source terms that can dramatically alter the totals, what numbers should people who want to discuss the victims of the bombings use when doing so?

There is, I think it should be clear, no simple answer to this. In practice, authors and reports seem to cluster around two numbers, which I will call the “low” and the “high” estimates. The “low” estimates are those derived from the estimates of the 1940s: around 70,000 dead at Hiroshima, and around 40,000 dead at Nagasaki, for 110,000 total dead. The “high” estimates are those that derive from the 1977 re-estimation: around 140,000 dead at Hiroshima, and around 70,000 dead at Nagasaki, for a total of 210,000 total dead. Given that the “high” estimates are almost double the “low” estimates, this is a significant difference. There is no intellectually defensible reason to assume that, for example, an average (105,000 dead at Hiroshima, 55,000 dead at Nagasaki) would be more accurate or meaningful.

My qualitative sense is that historians who want to emphasize the suffering of the Japanese (and the injustice of the bombing) tend to prefer the “high” numbers, while those who want to emphasize the military necessity of the attack tend to prefer the “low” numbers. And therein lies the real question: What do these estimates do for us, rhetorically? It is clear that numbers, stripped from their technical contexts, are deployed primarily as a form of moral calculus. And this should not surprise us, given that so much of the argument defending the atomic bombs relies on another casualty estimate: how many people might have died in a full-scale land invasion of Japan (numbers that have been similarly contested for decades, ranging from tens of thousands of casualties, to the more imaginative millions).

Separately, the number of dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki have also been explicitly compared to the estimated dead from the devastating firebombing attacks against both Germany (notably Dresden) and Japan (notably Tokyo) that preceded them. This argument is again part of the justification of atomic bombings, an attempt to show that they were not “special” in any particular moral sense when put up against “conventional” Allied activity. Whether this is or isn’t a strong argument is out of scope for this article, but it is just worth keeping in mind what work the “low” numbers do, for they pale in comparison with the highest estimates of the Tokyo bombing dead, and with the estimates for a land invasion of Japan.

Given that there is no satisfactory way to decide whether the “low” or “high” estimates are more accurate, it is fairly clear there is no “neutral” choice to be made. It ultimately comes down to which sort of authority one wishes to go with: the official estimates of the United States military in the 1940s, or the later estimates by a group of anti-nuclear weapons scientists, largely spearheaded by Japan. Both made legitimate points in making their estimations; neither show any apparent perfidy or obvious intellectual dishonesty.

Short of choosing one or the other, is there an elegant way to talk about the range? Saying “between 70,000 and 140,000 people died at Hiroshima” captures some of it, but does not really capture the reasons for the variance in these numbers. I might suggest, if there is space to do so, saying something like:

“The United States military estimated that around 70,000 people died at Hiroshima, though later independent estimates argued that the actual number was 140,000 dead. In both cases, the majority of the deaths occurred on the day of the bombing itself, with nearly all of them taking place by the end of 1945.”

This makes the authorship claims more explicit (even as it generalizes quite a bit into “the United States military” and “independent estimates”), and also makes it clear that this range is the cause of two entirely different assessments, not the errors of a single assessment. And it clarifies the question of timing, if the latter clause is allowed in. It is a wordy explanation—journalists will no doubt question whether it is worth the space in an article where they probably just wanted a simple number to quote—but if we are going to invoke such uncounted dead, it is worth the effort to do it in a way that is respectful of the uncertainties involved.

 https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/counting-the-dead-at-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter08072023&utm_content=NuclearRisk_CountingDeadHiroshimaNagasakiMag_08042020
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August 8, 2023 Posted by | Japan, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Decades Later, the U.S. Government Called Hiroshima and Nagasaki ‘Nuclear Tests’

The military was able to test both a uranium-fueled bomb on Hiroshima and a second plutonium bomb on Nagasaki to gauge their effects on big cities.

Today, in some elite circles of Russia and the United States, normalized talk of using “tactical” nuclear weapons has upped the madness ante.

NORMAN SOLOMON, AUG 1, 2023 https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/2663585/posts/4838936867

In 1980, when I asked the press office at the U.S. Department of Energy to send me a listing of nuclear bomb test explosions, the agency mailed me an official booklet with the title “Announced United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 Through December 1979.” As you’d expect, the Trinity test in New Mexico was at the top of the list. Second on the list was Hiroshima. Third was Nagasaki.

So, 35 years after the atomic bombings of those Japanese cities in August 1945, the Energy Department—the agency in charge of nuclear weaponry—was categorizing them as “tests.”

Later on, the classification changed, apparently in an effort to avert a potential P.R. problem. By 1994, a new edition of the same document explained that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “were not ‘tests’ in the sense that they were conducted to prove that the weapon would work as designed…or to advance weapon design, to determine weapons effects, or to verify weapon safety.”

But the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually were tests, in more ways than one.

Take it from the Manhattan Project’s director, Gen. Leslie Groves, who recalled: “To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids. It was also desirable that the first target be of such size that the damage would be confined within it, so that we could more definitely determine the power of the bomb.”

A physicist with the Manhattan Project, David H. Frisch, remembered that U.S. military strategists were eager “to use the bomb first where its effects would not only be politically effective but also technically measurable.” The military was able to test both a uranium-fueled bomb on Hiroshima and a second plutonium bomb on Nagasaki to gauge their effects on big cities.

For good measure, after the Trinity bomb test in the New Mexico desert used plutonium as its fission source on July 16, 1945, in early August the military was able to test both a uranium-fueled bomb on Hiroshima and a second plutonium bomb on Nagasaki to gauge their effects on big cities.

August 7, 2023 Posted by | history, Japan, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Protests held in Tokyo against nuclear water discharge

By Jiang Xueqing in Tokyo | chinadaily.com.cn 2023-07  https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202307/31/WS64c7b5d8a31035260b819829.html
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Japanese and South Korean civic groups gathered in front of the Japanese Prime Minister’s official residence on Monday in opposition to the administration’s plan to discharge nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean.

People attending the rally said the Japanese government’s insistence on discharging nuclear-contaminated water into the sea is an irresponsible move.

They raised doubts about the Japanese government’s claim the nuclear-contaminated water will be diluted before being released. Whether diluted or not, the protesters said, the overall radioactive substance level in the water remain unchanged.

They stressed discharging the water into the ocean will have a significant impact on the global marine environment.

Last week, a similar protest was held by Japanese people in front of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Tokyo.

Protesters said on Friday the ocean discharge plan is unacceptable because it poses a significant danger of radioactive contamination and will adversely affect the marine ecosystem and human health.

Some expressed concerns about Japan’s economy, which they believe will be affected by a boycott movement in neighboring countries and regions.

August 2, 2023 Posted by | Japan, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Failed Fukushima System Should Cancel Wastewater Ocean Dumping

The global ban on ocean dumping of radioactive waste adopted in 1993 applies only to barrels. It has allowed Britain and France to pump billions of gallons of radioactive wastewater into the Irish Sea and the North Sea respectively, for decades.

BY JOHN LAFORGE, 25 July 23  https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/25/failed-fukushima-system-should-cancel-wastewater-ocean-dumping/

From the Fukushima-Daiichi triple-reactor meltdown wreckage, Japan’s government and “Tepco,” the owner, are rushing plans to pump 1.37 million tons (about 3 billion pounds) of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific.

Their record is poor. Their lies are documented. This is not safe, at all.

To keep the three meltdowns’ wasted fuel from melting again, Tepco continuously pours cold water over 880 tons of “corium,” the red-hot rubblized fuel amassed somewhere under three devastated reactors. “That water leaks into a maze of basements and trenches beneath the reactors and mixes with groundwater flowing into the complex,” Reuters reported Sep. 3, 2013.

Most of this water is collected and put through Tepco’s jerry-rigged mechanism dubbed ALPS, for Advanced Liquid Processing System, which it turns out hasn’t processed much of anything.

Tepco, Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and much of the media endlessly repeat that ALPS removes over 62 radioactive materials from the ever-expanding volume of wastewater. Reports regularly claim the planned dumping is routine, safe, and manageable.

This unverified PR loop has fooled a lot of people, but the ALPS is a fraud. As early as 2013, the filter system stalled and the IAEA reported that April that ALPS had not “accomplished the expected result of removing some radionuclides,” Reuters reported.

In September 2018, the ALPS was revealed to have drastically failed, forcing Tepco to issue a public apology and a promise to re-filter huge volumes of the waste.

According to Reuters, Oct. 11, 2018, documents on a government committee’s website show that 84 percent of water held at Fukushima contains concentrations of radioactive materials higher than legal limits allow to be dumped.

Among the deadly isotopes still in the waste are cesium-137, strontium-90, cobalt-60, ruthenium, carbon-14, tritium, iodine-129, plutonium isotopes, and more than 54 more.

In a June 14, 2023 op/ed for the China Daily, Shaun Burnie, the Senior Nuclear Specialist at Greenpeace East Asia, reported that the ALPS “has been a spectacular failure,” and noted:

“About 70 percent or 931,600 cubic meters of the wastewater needs to be processed again (and probably many more times) by the ALPS to bring the radioactive concentration levels below the regulatory limit for discharge. Tepco has succeeded in reducing the concentration levels of strontium, iodine, and plutonium in only 0.2 percent of the total volume of the wastewater, and it still requires further processing. But no secondary processing has taken place in the past nearly three years. Neither Tepco nor the Japanese government has said how many times the wastewater needs to be processed, how long it will take to do so, or whether the efforts will ever be successful. … none of these issues has been resolved.”

Tepco says it will re-filter more than 70 percent of the wastewater through ALPS again, a process that itself leaves massive amounts of highly radioactive sludge that must be kept out of the environment for centuries.

Hoping to slow the rush to dump, Professor Ryota Koyama from Fukushima University, said in an interview with China Media Group last May, “If the Japanese government or the Tokyo Electric Power Co. really wants to discharge contaminated water into the sea, they need to explain in more detail whether the nuclides have really been removed.”

International law governing state-sponsored or corporate pollution of the seven seas is relatively useless in challenging Tepco’s outrageous transfer of private industrial poison into the public commons. The global ban on ocean dumping of radioactive waste adopted in 1993 applies only to barrels. It has allowed Britain and France to pump billions of gallons of radioactive wastewater into the Irish Sea and the North Sea respectively, for decades.

July 27, 2023 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, oceans, wastes | Leave a comment

Japan Doesn’t Want to Fight for Taiwan and Neither Do Other US Allies

if Japan fought alongside the US in a hypothetical conflict with China over Taiwan, the Japanese civilians and economy would suffer greatly. What’s more, in a conflict between two nuclear powers, China and the US, Japan may itself become a nuclear target,

22.07.2023 Ekaterina Blinova  https://sputnikglobe.com/20230722/japan-doesnt-want-to-fight-for-taiwan-and-neither-do-other-us-allies-1112066099.html

Despite Japan bolstering its military capabilities under the nation’s new Defense Buildup Program, it appears to have zero appetite to engage in direct confrontation with China over Taiwan, Western media and think tanks say.

US military facilities in Okinawa, Japan, might play a central role in any Taiwan crisis, according to the Western press. Moreover, American military analysts have almost unanimously agreed that Japan is “the most likely US ally to contribute troops” in a potential US conflict with China over the island.

Back in October 2021, War on the Rocks, a US online media outlet, quoted a Japanese poll which appeared to indicate that 74% of respondents would support their government’s military engagement in the Taiwan Strait against China. The report further speculated about the possibilities of circumventing the country’s Constitution, which limits Japan’s ability to participate in conflicts.

Bold statements made by some Japanese officials also seemed to confirm Tokyo’s resolve. One of them, former Minister of Defense Yasuhide Nakayama, insisted in June 2021 that Taiwan is a “red line” and that “we have to protect Taiwan as a democratic country.” Japan and Taiwan are geographically close and any possible military actions over the island could potentially affect Japan’s Okinawa prefecture, Nakayama argued at the time.

Is China Going to Take Taiwan by Force?

The People’s Republic of China, which considers Taiwan its inalienable part, has repeatedly stated that it is going to reunite with the island peacefully, referring to years of fruitful collaboration with the former Taiwanese government formed by members of Kuomintang Party.

The Kuomintang can make a spectacular comeback during the Taiwanese general elections, scheduled for January 2024. The party’s victory could nip the fuss around Taiwan’s secessionism and potential conflict in the bud. Even US lawmakers admit it, considering the Kuomintang’s win a potential “threat” to Washington’s plans in the Asia-Pacific.

Biden Fast-Tracks Arming of Taiwan

For their part, the Biden administration and American legislators have repeatedly issued provocative statements with regard to the island, with the US president claiming time and time again that Washington is ready to “protect” Taiwan “militarily.” The US has also bolstered arms sales to the island.

In late June, Biden approved two potential arms sales totaling $440 million to Taiwan, including ammo and other military equipment. Earlier, in March, the US State Department approved a $619 million sale of hundreds of missiles to Taiwan to arm its new US-made F-16 jet fighters. Moreover, the Biden administration has started to use fast-track authority for accelerating the pace of the arming of Taiwan. The same mechanism has been used by Biden to speed-up Ukraine’s militarization.

Japanese Leadership Seems Unhappy With US Bellicosity

The unfolding situation has apparently given shivers to the Japanese leadership. The Wall Street Journal broke on Monday that the Japanese government is ready to give permission to the US to use bases in Japan in the case of conflict over Taiwan, but Tokyo’s own participation is unlikely.

Per the report, Washington invited Tokyo to consider using its Self-Defense Forces, especially the Maritime Self-Defense Force for hunting for Chinese submarines around the island of Taiwan and for other military missions.

Presently, Japan is home to about 54,000 US troops, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. It also hosts the headquarters of the US Navy’s 7th Fleet and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Tokyo’s concerns have certain grounds. In May, Japanese scholar Kiyoshi Sugawa wrote for Responsible Statecraft, the online magazine of the Quincy Institute (a DC-based think tank), that if Japan fought alongside the US in a hypothetical conflict with China over Taiwan, the Japanese civilians and economy would suffer greatly. What’s more, in a conflict between two nuclear powers, China and the US, Japan may itself become a nuclear target, Sugawa warned.

The DC-based think also refers to the recent Japanese polls which indicate that just 11% of Japanese respondents consider it possible to fight alongside the US against China, while 27% said that their forces should not cooperate with the US military at all. The majority (56%) said that providing logistical support to the US would be more than enough in the event of the conflict.

Nobody Wants to Die for Uncle Sam

What’s more, Japan is not the only US ally unwilling to fight with China over Taiwan. The Australian government has recently signaled that it gave no promises to Washington about military participation in a potential conflict. The Philippines does not want to get dragged into the conflict, either.

When it comes to South Korea, it also lacks any enthusiasm of joining the US in a combat operation in the Taiwan Strait. Western observers draw attention to the fact that South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol avoided meeting with then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Seoul after her controversial tour to Taiwan. The Diplomat suggested that Seoul has at least three reasons to avoid a possible war over the island. First, the China market accounts for 30% of South Korea’s total trade; second, Seoul fears that a Taiwan conflict would increase “the North Korean threat”; third, for Seoul friendly relations with Beijing is a guarantee against a conflict with Pyongyang.

Still, there is yet another US regional treaty ally, Thailand. However, according to the DC-based think tank, it’s completely impossible to force Bangkok to fight against China for the sake of Taiwan.

While muddying the waters of the Taiwan Strait, the US risks staying face-to-face with China which would mean a defeat in a possible military standoff, judging from the US’ earlier war game simulations.

July 26, 2023 Posted by | Japan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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