Here in SK right now (yes it's 4:30am), everyone's against it but no one knows the data. Once people see the data they're like "oh".
South Korea has an inherent hatred for Japan, so this isn't surprising at all.
The Japanese did some pretty radical things during the occupation. It's interesting to see the ripple effects of these policies so far into the future.
It's more like a wound that never healed than just ripples - early South Korean leaders were people who had formerly collaborated with the Japanese, and it showed in the way they treated their people. It's only relatively recently that South Korea became what anyone would call a liberal democracy.
Japan also never apologised and pretends they did nothing wrong.
Are they afraid of reparations or something? I don't understand. Like, Canada apologized to the native americans and it wasn't an expensive or embarassing process. I won't say native folks were made whole from the process, but it was a formal acknowledgement. Any idea what the resistance is?
Like, Canada apologized to the native americans and it wasn't an expensive or embarassing process.
That's precisely the point. Apologizing is cheap, actually working with Indigenous communities, upholding their sovereignty to their ancestral lands, actively helping them heal from the multi generation wide effects of what they were forced to go through, listening to them and acting on their feedback, and actually giving them rights in general is expensive, which is why we haven't done that. We basically said "sorry aboot that genocide eh?" And unilaterally declared the Indigenous rights issue solved.
I hope you didn't get the wrong impression of how I view Truth and Reconciliation. All I'm saying is that the government acknowledged some of their crimes.
The Japanese state, won't even do that for the Koreans.
Korea has an inherent hatred for Japan
As we should. The Japanese government has been jovially profiteering off of Korea since they annexed and "colonized" the peninsula all the way to well after the Korean War where they used the genocidal massacre of Koreans in the bloody brothers war to jump-start their economy out of their post-war devastation.
If Americans think it's ok, how about we grab a few tankers and dump it off the California coast?
Two-faced fucks.
Edit: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abc1507
The water contains traces of other non-tritium radioactive isotopes. These do bioaccumulate.
Then y'all shouldn't have a problem with it, right?
Yet, every single response has been antagonistic because nobody wants this waste dumped near them.
This water? I wouldn't be concerned with at all. I'd gladly fill a swimming pool with it and shine some UV lights on it and throw a pool party. It would be approximately as dangerous as drinking from uranium glass. I wouldn't recommend drinking large quantities of the water, much like I would recommend with all pool water, but otherwise it doesn't matter.
Per this source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abc1507
The treated water contains traces of other radioactive elements that do bioaccumulate. While the water alone is below the legal food limit, that can't be considered as a fair limit due to bioaccumulation of heavier radioactive isotopes.
They filtered out the majority of the other bio-accumulating isotopes. "Trace amounts" of isotopes exist in every single element independent of nuclear power plants.
But the traces in the wastewater are fairly high, falling just below legal food limits (ignoring that bioaccumulation by definition accumulates toxins from the water into animals).
Where are you reading that? I saw that the heavy metals were all filtered out and this discharge is for the Tritated Water only, with "trace" amounts of the heavy metals, meaning what you would find in normal salt water.
That isn't what trace means, though.
This is the data averaged over the tanks: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abc1507
The variance in concentrations is massive. The concentrations on average is barely below legal limits and the bioaccumulation factor for these isotopes is fairly sizable in marine life.
Tepco is cutting corners on this release. They have a history of cutting corners and they will continue to cut corners. The cleanup is a massive money sink for the Japanese government and is something they are eager to be rid of (also, y'know, some old people dying is probably good for Japan's demographics). Unfortunately for Japan, they aren't the only people eating fish caught in Japan.
How about linking to a source that doesn't have a 30 to 15 dollar paywall for non-members? Or at the very least posting the full study instead of straight to the paywall that most people can't afford.
The paper is also from 2020 so it's also missing the most recent information and context in regards to the water being diluted and sent out.
Edit: a user directed me to where I could find the full study, and it can be found here Ultimately the study says there should be additional research into the isotopes found within the tanks beyond the tritium found in them.
I definitely agree additional studying should be done, but even then the article doesn't disagree with releasing the tanks. Instead they would rather wait until the isotopes are more decayed. There is however a risk of tank breach due to possible natural disasters such as tsunamis or earthquakes that would allow these isotopes to be release in a more potent concentration.
So the option is to either release it in lower concentration and diluted water is specific amounts, or hold on to it and hope the tanks don't breach for 60 years.
My bad - FWIW, Science is considered to be very reputable and should be accessible from most libraries.
The risk exposure isn't changed, though. The plan is to slowly release it for decades... So if there's natural disaster, the risk is still there.
It's Tepco wanting to preserve their bottom line at the cost of human health. Simple as that.
- It would be a waste of time and money
- You'd ask for an even bigger devil's milkshake afterwards. There is no sating your superstitious trials
For more information on this subject, check out Bong Joon Ho's 2006 documentary The Host.
Dumping is illegal where I live, you'll get a fine ;)
Jokes aside, does anyone with a chemistry/physics background know of a technical solution/alternative to dumping? I suspect Japan would not dump nuclear waste in their domestic waters if they could avoid it.
The radioactive component is mostly tritium. As long as they get almost all of the heavy radioactive elements, the hydrogen isotopes are basically harmless in the quantities we're talking about here. The ocean is a very, very big place.
They aren't dumping it. They dug miles of caves below the sea floor and are pumping the filtered water into the caves slowly over the span of decades. That's why this whole thing is very dumb. Japan is taking enormous measures to do this safely.
This whole thing would legitimately be the stupidest story of the decade in any decade where Donald Trump isn't making daily headlines.
