Despite opposition from the Fukushima fishing community and China, Japan has obtained the green light from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to dump some of the treated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, devastated by an earthquake, into the Pacific Ocean and a tsunami on March 11, 2011.
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Japan plans to begin dumping at least one million cubic meters of water discarded after cooling the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactors in the near future, despite opposition from Japanese fishermen and governments of countries including China and South Korea.
The presence of radioactive waste such as tritium in the water that will be dumped one kilometer off the coast of Fukushima does not pose any risk, the Japanese government has repeatedly said.
But scientific explanations and the argument that dumping water from nuclear power plants into the sea is a common procedure in the world fail to convince the Japanese fishing industry.
Fears of the fishing sector
It is feared that the price of fish caught in the area will plummet and its market will disappear, as occurred after the 2011 nuclear accident that forced the evacuation of 150,000 people, emptied large swathes of Fukushima province, collapsing its fishing, agricultural production and cattle.
In neighboring countries such as China and South Korea, where anti-Japanese sentiment is periodically revived due to the Japanese colonization suffered in the first half of the last century, the dumping is seen as an abuse that cannot be allowed.
The perception that Japan is using the Pacific as a private dump is circulating on social media. The fact that the spill will take place over the next three or four decades that are needed to dismantle the damaged plant does nothing to calm things down.
