Tag: Fukushima

It looks like the Presidential office is serving some really good seafood this week:

Senior presidential secretary for press affairs Kim Eun-hye (L) is served a tray of sliced raw fish at the in-house cafeteria of the presidential office in Seoul on Aug. 28, 2023, in this photo provided by the office. (Yonhap)

President Yoon Suk Yeol and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo ate seafood during their weekly lunch meeting Monday, the presidential office said, as the government tries to promote seafood safety in the wake of Japan’s release of radioactive water into the ocean.

Seafood was also served at the in-house cafeteria of the presidential office. The top office has said various kinds of seafood will be served at the cafeteria throughout the week, beginning with sliced raw fish and grilled mackerel Monday.

“The number of people who dined at the cafeteria today was 1.5 times more than usual, including many staff members who canceled their lunch appointments to dine at the cafeteria,” the presidential office said in a notice to reporters.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The protesters don’t care about facts like this, they only care about push anti-Japanese narratives and bashing the Yoon administration:

This image provided by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries on Aug. 27, 2023, shows locations, marked by dots, in South Korea’s territorial waters where radiation tests are being or will be conducted by Seoul, as Japan began to release radioactive water from its crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. (Yonhap)

The radiation levels in the waters near South Korea remain well below the standards for drinkable water defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), Seoul’s oceans ministry said Sunday.

It was the first such test conducted on 15 locations in three areas of South Korea’s territorial waters after Japan began to release radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean last Thursday.

The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries said it released the results of the radiation tests, carried out Friday, on five locations in the southeastern waters, and plans to disclose the rest of the test results on 10 other locations as soon as they are available.

In the latest result, the concentration levels of cesium-135 and cesium-137 stood at 0.067-0.094 and 0.077-0.098 becquerel per liter, respectively, compared with the WHO’s 10 becquerel per liter for drinking water.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The opposition party and these protesters do not care about the saving the oceans, if they did they would be protesting the stopping of dumping of waste water from Korea’s nuclear plants as well. Better yet they need to protest hospitals that give out CT scans which is more dangerous than the waste water being released. This is all about politics and sliming the Yoon administration:

Korean public sentiment over Japan’s release of wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is deteriorating rapidly, with the opposition bloc spearheading protests on Tokyo’s “irresponsible behavior.”

Despite the worsening public sentiment, President Yoon Suk Yeol remains silent on the matter, having Prime Minister Han Duck-soo speak for the government on the matter. 

Reps. Woo Won-shik and Yang Yi Won-young of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), Rep. Kang Eun-mi from the minor opposition Justice Party and independent lawmaker Rep. Yang Jung-suk participated in a protest organized by Japan’s Social Democratic Party and a number of civic groups in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture. 

“This protest is not about a fight between Korea and Japan, it is about taking action to protect the ocean and the future generation,” DPK Rep. Woo Won-shik said during the protest. 

“The most appropriate way of recovering Japan’s reputation is an immediate stop of the release. Through solidarity between the two countries, Japanese people should fix the problems of the Fumio Kishida administration and Koreans should fix that of the Yoon administration.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The Fukushima waste water issue is new anti-Japan issue the Korean left can demagogue for many more years bash Japan and Korean conservatives with because it is easy to demagogue. This is because most people don’t read up on what the radioactive waste water is which is harmless in the doses being discharged. Most people also don’t realize South Korea and other countries dump waste water from their nuclear plants into the ocean as well. If these leftists are so concerned about the environment how come they are not protesting outside South Korean nuclear plants?:

South Korea’s main opposition party warned it would take a series of actions condemning the Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s policies on Japan as Tokyo began a phased release of treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant on Thursday afternoon.

Rep. Lee Jae-myung, the head of the Democratic Party of Korea, said in an emergency meeting gathering all of the party’s lawmakers that Yoon, with his “leniency with Japan,” was “no less responsible for the destruction of our seas being undertaken by the Japanese government.”

“The Yoon administration practically acted as a spokesperson for Japan, even as it was going to pollute our waters with radioactive waste,” he said. “Our party will not stop fighting against Japan’s reckless acts of environmental destruction.”

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but t

These protesters have no creditability considering they are not protesting similar waste water dumping South Korea and far worse in China. This is strictly just another anti-Japanese protest for political reasons:

Activists stage a protest in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, Tuesday, urging the Japanese government to revoke its decision to start releasing treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean, Thursday. Yonhap

Korea’s main opposition party and civic groups have pledged to hold an all-out protest against Japan’s announcement, Tuesday, to release treated wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean starting Thursday.

The Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) denounced Japan’s decision by staging rallies at the National Assembly and in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to condemn the decision.

“Japan made the vicious decision to discharge contaminated water into the ocean, which belongs to all humans, without scientific proof, understanding from neighboring countries or agreement by the Japanese people,” DPK Chairman Rep. Lee Jae-myung said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I wish the Chief of the IAEA would have asked these lawmakers when South Korea is going to stop dumping their own treated radioactive water into the ocean?:

Rafael Mariano Grossi (R), director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), attends a meeting with Woo Won-shik (L), the floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), and Wi Seong-gon, a DP member who heads a special committee tasked with opposing Japan’s Fukushima water discharge plan, at the National Assembly on July 9, 2023. (Yonhap)

Senior officials of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) on Sunday met with the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to express concerns and regret over Japan’s plan to discharge water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi met DP officials during his three-day visit to Seoul to explain the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s report that concluded Japan’s Fukushima water discharge plan would meet international standards.

DP floor leader Woo Won-shik expressed regret over the IAEA’s backing of Japan’s water release plan despite lingering public concerns over the potential long-term impact of treated wastewater on people and the environment. 

“(The IAEA’s) verification was biased in favor of Japan from the beginning, losing its neutrality and objectivity,” Woo, who has staged a hunger strike for the 14th day, said during the meeting at the National Assembly.

“It is very regrettable that (the IAEA) made a conclusion without properly investigating (the water release’s) impact on neighboring nations, making it ‘self-verification’ and ‘a Japan-tailored investigation,'” Woo added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is all just political theater for the uninformed masses on this topic that do not realize that South Korea and other countries release more becquerels of tritium per year into the ocean than what the Fukushima plant is scheduled to release.

So when are the Korean leftists going to start protesting their own nuclear power plants that are releasing more becquerels of tritium per year than what the Fukushima plant is scheduled to release?:

The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power say the concentration of tritium in the discharged water will be lowered to 1,500 becquerels per liter, using a unit that refers to the amount of ionizing radiation released from a radioactive element. Officials say the annual limit will be 22 trillion becquerels.

That figure is smaller than what many other nuclear facilities around the world routinely release into water or air. Grossi of the IAEA said the release of radionuclides into water “has a proven record.” He said China, South Korea, the U.S. and France were among the countries doing it.

A nuclear-fuel recycling facility in northwestern France discharged 10,000 trillion becquerels of tritium into the English Channel in 2021, according to operator Orano.

Orano’s spokesperson Gwénaël Thomas said in an email that tritium discharges from its facility “have no health impact,” because the radiation is a tiny fraction of natural radioactivity in France and tritium is a naturally occurring radioactive element.

A spokesman for Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, the leading operator of nuclear plants in South Korea, said the country’s discharges into water last year totaled about 214 trillion becquerels of tritium. He said that level was safe for the public.

Wall Street Journal

You can read more at the link, but it is pretty clear that if the Japanese stick to the IAEA approved plan, what they are doing is within international norms. This means much of these protests are more politically driven than any concern about the environment. It reminds me of the THAAD protests in South Korea where the activists were saying the radar was going to poison the agriculture around the area which was scientifically proven to be nonsense. However, these protesters are not going to let science ruin a good narrative.

The IAEA analysis supports the best of bad options on how to dispose of radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant:

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), speaks about the results of the IAEA’s review of Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water stored at the Fukushima nuclear power station into the sea during a press conference in Tokyo on July 4, 2023. (Yonhap)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Tuesday Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water stored at the Fukushima nuclear power station into the sea is consistent with its safety standards.

After a two-year review, the U.N. nuclear watchdog also said that the discharges of the water treated by the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), the plant’s custom purification system, would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.

The results of the review are likely to add new momentum to Japan’s push to start discharging the water from the plant — damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 – some time around this summer despite lingering opposition from neighboring countries, including South Korea and China.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the Korean officials that studied the plan to release contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean as the best of bad options:

Japan’s decision to release contaminated water from its crippled Fukushima plant was finalized years ago as the most realistic alternative, and there is no point in talking about other ways to dispose of the water now, an official said Monday.

Amid concerns about health hazards, critics have suggested alternative ways, other than releasing the wastewater into the ocean, such as solidifying the water within concrete or storing the water in massive tanks.

“That part is something that was discussed for more than four years in the mid-2010s,” Park Ku-yeon, the first deputy chief of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, said of other methods during a daily briefing on the Fukushima release plan.

“At the time, there were extremely complex discussions within Japan, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was in the final decision,” Park said. “The current method of releasing it into the ocean was finalized as the most realistic alternative when scientific precedents and safety were comprehensively taken into account.”

Suggesting the IAEA reverse the decision would contradict the principles of faith and trust, Park said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Korean shoppers are supposedly hoarding sea salt due to fears that all the salt off the shores of Korea will soon be contaminated by the release of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant:

Workers produce sea salt at a salt farm in Sinan County, South Jeolla Province, in October 2021. Korea Times photo by Seo Jae-hoon

The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries denied that the salt price has increased due to hoarding amid the Fukushima concerns. 

“The major cause for the salt price rise was a decrease in production due to more rainy days than usual and retailers’ stockpiling in preparation for the monsoon season,” a ministry official said. 

But the view of industry players was different. They said that while this year’s production decreased by about 30 percent from a year earlier, this was not enough to explain the soaring salt price at present. 

“Japan’s plan has scared consumers off. This would not be the sole reason for increasing salt prices but had some impact for sure,” an official of a salt farm in Sinan County said. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the IAEA approved of the plan by the Japanese to release the water into the ocean with a small enough amount of radioactivity that it would be diluted. According to the Korean government they have stepped up monitoring of the ocean water around Korea and have not detected any radioactivity.