edit: changed title from 'False Fukushima Fears' to 'Exaggerated Fukushima Fears', sacrificing my lovely alliteration as others have pointed out that it would be too much to say that the fears of radiation leakages are unfounded, but merely to say that this is the least bad option given previous precedent as cynesthesia has pointed out.
Image is of the large array of water storage tanks holding the tritium-contaminated water.
This week's preamble is very kindly provided by our beautiful poster @cynesthesia@hexbear.net, with some light editing. In periods where not much of earth-shattering importance is happening in the news, I hope to do this more often!
In 2011, the Fukushima nuclear incident occurred. Since then, water has been used to cool radioactive waste and debris, which contaminates the water with radioactive isotopes. Currently, TEPCO, the Japanese energy company that is reponsible to Fukushima, is storing about 1.3 million m3 of contaminated water (equivalent to about 500 Olympic swimming pools for our American friends) in about 1000 tanks. Approximately 100,000 m3 of contaminated cooling water is generated per year to this day. TEPCO doesn't want to store escalating volumes of nuclear waste for decades until half-lives are spent. This would mean adding substantial storage capacity every year at increased cost and risk of tank spills.
The contaminated water includes heavier isotopes like caesium as well as hydrogen's isotope, tritum. Caesium is a big atom at 137 molar mass (we love our tremendous atoms, folks) while tritium is heavy hydrogen and has only a molar mass of 3 (pathetic, low energy). The TEPCO people are using water treatment to remove heavy isotopes from water, but not tritium. The large adult isotopes are easy to remove with treatment but tritium is incorporated into water, so it blends in with the others. The treated Fukushima water contains low levels of the big isotopes but still contains tritium.
Isotopes release radiation that damages the body's cells. The longer an individual molecule containing an isotope is in a body, the more likely it is that the isotope will go BRAZAP and release radiation that fucks up the cells. Bioaccumulation is a toxicology term for how certain contaminants can accumulate in the food cycle. For example, algae eat contaminants, then the algae is eaten by bugs, then bugs by fish, then fish by people. Isotopes that are bioaccumulative like our large adult son caesium are more hazardous. Tritium is not bioaccumulative because it is effectively part of water. Water cycles through bodies quickly - that's why you sweat and pee and get thirsty. 
Fukushima water would be treated and then then mixed with seawater at a ratio of 1:800 before it is pumped 1km offshore. Each year approximately 166,000 m3 of treated water will be released, which will draw down the volume of contaminated water being stored over a few decades. Real-time stats associated with the release are found here. At the point of discharge, water contains about 207 Bq/L of radioactivity, about 16 times greater than the 10-15 Bq/L background level in the ocean overall. Drinking water guidelines for tritium radioactivity range from 1,000-10,000 Bq/L, if one were to drink seawater.
In wastewater treatment terms, this is a small amount of dilution in a very large body of water. It is unlikely to have any measurable impact per the terms of Western science. In the context of mother nature taking yet another one for the team and environmental distress, this sucks. In the context of making the best of a shitty situation, the Fukushima water release is peanuts compared to the many other environmental liabilities that are not addressed. For example, the Hanford Site is an example of a nuclear wastewater storage facility gone/going wrong in Oregon.
Ending note by 72: By far the biggest impact of the release of this water won't be its direct effects, but those on commerce and international relations. Almost half of Japanese aquatic exports go to China, comprising 8% of all Japanese firms shipping goods to China, and they have now been cut off due to their anger at Japan. Perhaps this reaction and the cancellation of imports was inevitable, as nuclear power and radiation in general is a poorly understood, frightening, and thus easily exploitable topic in every country. China is not the first country to use a misunderstanding of radiation risk to try and achieve a goal - Germany seems very pleased with itself - and they will not be the last.
In all: it is unequivocal that China is massively exaggerating the risks of this water's release. However, the bellicose rhetoric and actions of Japan, South Korea, and America are a much greater danger to the region, and none of the three seem to be in any hurry to try diplomacy instead of increasing military budgets and gearing up for war.
It's that time again - every two months I give myself a week off, to rest and recalibrate. Your regularly scheduled programming will resume next week.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
Let's pretend that tomorrow, some kind of smart and pragmatic leadership were to take over the US and kick the neocons out. What's the best way they could respond to BRICS? Just wondering as a hypothetical.
I fully support america being headed by absolute idiots
deleted by creator
That could happen, but plenty of "marxists" have given up their historic responsibility to take power and chosen to become third worldists that wait for poor people to save them while they sit on the wealthiest country on earth, or become "wait for the revolution" insurrectionists which is even worse.
I completely dodged your question to make a jab at internet leftists sorry
it me
but for real im trying to ditch the laziness and do more locally
I don't mean to shame anyone into getting out there, there are a multitude of valid reasons to not be able to do anything locally. There may not even exist anything local for you to get involved in. Hey, just not wanting to or not being confident enough to do it are fine too.
My problem is how that decision is interpreted, so I am shaming the moral position of renunciation masquerading as a politics that is I think the most common feature of the leftists you see online. If that weren't the case you'd see a lot more activity irl because there are so many of these people online
the only marxist party i've seen here is the Bob Avakian cult
If we're saying that the deep state says "Okay, fuck, we'll do ANYTHING to stop the new world from coming, you have permission to do ANYTHING to keep America's supremacy regardless of whether it's ideologically capitalist or socialist or fascist" then honestly I think the United States wins 99 times out of 100. Tax the rich heavily, dismantle the legalized corruption that is lobbying. Take down landlords and bring back American industry and autarky; essentially recreate the years of the planned war economy under FDR. Implement MMT policies. Assassinate politicians from non-nuclear states. Create a national program of improving the lives and health of the poor, solve the underlying material problems that are preventing people from joining the army. Solve the opioid epidemic by cutting the power of your intelligence agencies and corporations exploiting them. Don't allow unions, but instead give people reasons to never want to make them by a mixture of genuine carrot (actually good wages and benefits) and stick (threat of targeted killing of the union leadership).
The United States and the West does have the raw resources and power to win the Second Cold War, that's the scary part about all this. The entire project opposing them could be destroyed within a decade with the above policies. They still have the dominant currency, control over the global financial system, and 800 military bases through which to exert their whims. Their military equipment leaves a lot to be desired but the technology and competence to create better ones can be created and nurtured without having to start from scratch. They cannot do it while remaining so beholden to the logic of financial capitalism, of letting the landlord parasites have ever-increasing power and say, of having corporations that care more about profit and investors and shareholders than actually making anything. Their own ideology is destroying them despite having the hypothetical power to crush the rest of the world. If we get the hypercompetent fascist that "Bidenomics" is but a pale shadow of then we might be fucked. But I think that even if this leader existed and was waiting in the wings, could they overcome the power of remaining American institutions to institute the program above? I doubt it. The rot feels too deep now.
How does BRICS not win in your situation? It's a way to extend the state, but the state will have to change so much that it cannot be maintained as it is and will become something new. I guess I call that a lose condition, or something.
because the above program doesn't necessitate that America gives up hegemony and imperialism, if anything it can do repression even more effectively than it currently is. billionaires can still exist, their military is still killing people everywhere, etc. it's a drastic change from current conditions but it's still capitalism, still colonialism.
I think I misread a few things tbh, I see now this is basically a recreation of the post-war period. I still think that there's no going back from dominated by finance capital without so drastically changing the state apparatus that it becomes broken and incapable of maintaining against riots. The finance capital apparatus is too huge of a portion of the structure to allow to be hurt by the bringing back of major production. I guess "dominance while ideology doesn't matter" makes this viable, though. Good ideas. Don't tell Joe
The US created the Petrodollar, they should kill it while they still control it.
The way to "respond" to the BRICS is to cooperate with China and actualy put the US ahead of the renewable energy race. I don't want to make a cheesy comparison with the space race, but you can note that all these technologies overlap with a great number of industries and sectors of the economy, obviously as energy is the foundation of any economy and it gives capitalism a much needed new area of investment that can be translated to real world material goods. People call it the second industrial revolution etc I wont go into that.
The benefit here isn't just economic, the BRICS nations are still heavily invested into fossil fuels and the "best" way for western capitalism to compete here would be to make them irrelevant, to crash their energy export economies.
But it should be obvious here that the US itself is too heavily invested and dependent on fossil fuels and this wouldn't just be a change of leadership but a mini-revolution against big oil so I guess it invalidates the whole premise.
If the US decided to rid the world of the Petro-dollar, wouldn't that undermine the ability to export debt and inflation to the rest of the world? Or at the very least, happily speed up the dedollarization that the Yanks are so afraid of. Sure it would massively hurt the petro-states in the Gulf, but presumably they could theoretically weather it if they got given international assistance in the transition periods.
I think this is true. US can not bully the world this way without it.
My assumption is also that as I said it is realy about the early advantage where the US can theoretically still become the leader in renewable energy and that this leadership in turn would be equivalent to the 19th-20th century early advantage by European capitalists industrialization.
People rightly point out giving up the dollar dominance is painful to say the least but it is either you do that in a conscious and planned manner or just let your enemies dictate the terms. Either way the de-dollarization is guaranteed and IMO it is best to get ahead of it by transforming/leading this process towards something that is even remotely advantageous for the US again.
It realy is just lets go back to US capitalism in the post-war period which is recognized as the golden era simply because there was a massive incentive and opportunity for investment into real production. The key areas where true technological innovation(i.e not grifter "tech" bullshit in IT)happens is in energy and manufacturing, even more so taking climate change into account.
Given the OP's prompt, a rational/competent US leadership would recognize that the US must abandon or at least temporarily sacrifice the strongest neoliberal forces now in order to come up ahead later.
These are all directly things that BRICS (or at least China) would accept as American concessions I think. The US won't stop em from using fossil fuels but will make it more lucrative to move away? Then they benefit and China will dominate the production soon anyways. The US sees china's growth and understands that only steps of destruction will possibly stop their acceleration ahead. It's why I went destruction in my theoretical situation
Isn't a key motivation for oil producers joining BRICS to help guide economic expansion for countries that are currently almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels exports?
The Indian and Chinese international tourism markets are ripe for the picking.
The really terrible take would be sanctioning all economies "supporting the Russian war" and using that as an excuse to put finance sanctions on brics countries. Though I think that our theoretically pragmatic character here might realize that it backfires as it has with Russia and China and maybe not pull this move. So instead, the US can try to cause movements to destabilize these countries through radicalizing opposition and border conflicts (we've seen this before), but China has learned how to deal with that and I think the other countries could follow suit.
I'd say realistically, the best way to maintain power is to go more extreme and deadly in force again to scare everyone for another 20 years like the bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan. But escalate a bit more through the use of major strikes on entire cities in a country which can be easily dismissed by Americans but not by Brics countries.... Say.... Nicaragua or something. I think this would fail also, but otherwise I don't see many paths forward.
Oh oh, maybe they could play some financial games by inflating the price of the dollar to cannibalize the American poor but force larger debts onto debt holders to leverage their support is a crusade against the Global South. But that's gonna get some pushback and require some European countries to do some repression for stability.
Just wait til you hear the BRICS resistance plans I've got and plans for the ultimate destruction of western imperialism. I'm not just the son of
I'm the son left at the dump at birth and raised by 
to know exactly how to strategically hurt most with the patience I learned from my mother, 
who taught me that waiting means it's your turn
Maybe some kind of digital dollar, a crypto dollar exchangeable for a real dollar at 1:1 by law, providing a sanctions-proof system for the settlement of payments which would remove much of the motivation for dedollarization.
To answer your question in the complete opposite way: with the rise of BRICS and the neocons staying in power I expect regional powers to expand and crackdown hard on their spheres of influence. The US will paint South America red in a new wave of bloodshed as Operation Condor II kicks off and we may even get the invasion of Mexico that the GOP is currently promoting. Highly doubtful BRICS will ever amount to a real defensive pact, especially since India and China are actually taking part in border clashes and India is working with ANZ to undermine China, so Brazil should be very concerned about whether it can maintain control over not just its region but its own sovereignty. Multipolarity will mirror 1890s geopolitics more than anything else. Will be interesting to see if the “political actions” remain covert and we see another wave of coups and military juntas in LatAm or if the US goes old school and starts making land grabs Panama and Mexican-American war style