8/31/23 - Fukushima Saigai

After the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan there was an outcry over nuclear energy, but only for a short period of time. The mainstream media covered the story for ratings, usually downplaying the dangers, while the alternative media painted the meltdown as the end of all life as we know it. Radioisotopes were found a year later in kelp near Southern California; radioactive material was also found in San Francisco as recent as 2018; and even NOAA Fisheries found elevated levels of radiation in some tuna fish. In 2017 the story became widespread again with reports of massive radiation spikes up to 530 sieverts per hour inside Reactor 2. This resulted in robots being destroyed when sent inside. The Japanese government also coerced residents back into the surrounding countryside sooner than later after the disaster under threats of losing financial assistance. Now the Japanese government and TEPCO, Tokyo Electric Power Co., are going ahead with plans to dump 540 Olympic swimming pools worth of tritium-contaminated wastewater into the ocean. Reportedly, the “water was treated with a special filtering system that remove all the radioactive elements except tritium.” What gets forgotten is that it’s not so much the current water dumping that is the issue, but the disaster itself which dumped unknown amounts of other radioactive materials into the ocean and atmosphere, including high levels of cesium which was registering at 250 times the acceptable safe limit in 2012, and again in 2019, although at slightly lesser levels.

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