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  • 2017-06-27 (xsd:date)
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  • Japan to Dump Deadly Fukushima Waste into Pacific Ocean? (en)
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  • In May and June 2017, an assortment of web sites that share a history of posting unreliable information published a report stating that Japanese authorities had announced plans to dispose of nuclear wastewater from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in the Pacific Ocean — a claim that is at odds with mainstream news reporting on the topic, including the source cited by the article itself. For example, YourNewsWire.com's story began: Citing a televised interview with a U.K. engineering expert on an April 2017 segment of a news program on TRT World (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation's international news channel), the report continued: However, note the discrepancy between the statement attributed to Whitby directly above and the article's opening paragraph, which said: Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean. Here is a transcript of Whitby's exact words: Whitby didn't say the Japanese had announced they're doing it; he said the Japanese were beginning to talk about doing it. His remarks were apparently informed by a New York Times report published the month before saying Japanese officials were debating dumping Fukushima wastewater into the sea: It appears Japan has been considering this measure for quite some time. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, called on Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) in 2015 to work toward discharging low-level contaminated water into the ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency made the same recommendation two years before that, stipulating that Tepco would have to conduct safety and environmental assessments first, and the Nuclear Regulation Authority would have to review them. The IAEA maintains that such a release would not only be safe (because the radioactive water would be diluted to a level regarded as unharmful), but that it is consistent with standard practice: For good or ill, it may well come to pass that contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi will be diluted and dumped into the Pacific Ocean, because no one has yet come up with a better solution for dealing with radioactive leakage from the plant. Unless it is already being done in secret, however, as of June 2017, it is still a proposed solution to a nearly intractable problem. (en)
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