Controversial Decision: Japan’s Fukushima Water Dumping Sparks Economic and Diplomatic Consequences

2023-08-29 17:54:40

The controversial decision of the Japanese Government to dump purified water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean continues to bring both economic and diplomatic consequences for the Japanese.

ALSO READ: Japan dumps Fukushima water into the sea: What is tritium, the radioactive element that might not be eliminated?

The efforts of both the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), and the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, to explain that the plan does not entail any type of risk to the environment or to people, have been of little use. an argument supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) itself, to convince its neighbors.

And among them stands out the case of China, which has been opposed to the dumping plan since it was announced two years ago.

The Asian giant is the main buyer of Japanese marine products. It is estimated that Japanese exports to China and Hong Kong alone amount to 1,100 million dollars annually, half of the total generated by said industry in Japan.

However, on Thursday the 24th it decided to suspend all Japanese fish imports, an extension to the measure taken in July and which applied only to products from the Fukushima region and other nearby prefectures.

The reason, they say from Beijing, would be “to protect the health of Chinese consumers.” Well, despite the approvals that the plan has, China describes as “extremely selfish and an act of irresponsibility” the plan that involves throwing out a million tons of water stored in the nuclear power plant over the next 30 years.

“China is not the only country that has raised doubts regarding this discharge. South Korea has launched a similar ban on Japanese marine products. It is understood that the water has gone through a cleaning process that has freed it from almost all residues -except tritium- and formally there should be no major concern. However, there are politicians and scientists who consider that a more detailed or prolonged study is necessary before the spill. That has generated special suspicion. On the other hand, in China there is much question as to whether this option was the cheapest that Japan might have chosen. There were other methods of evaporation or dumping underground that would have been ten or a hundred times more expensive than this option of throwing them into the ocean,” Marco Carrasco, a professor of East Asian Studies at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of the University, explains to El Comercio. University of San Marcos.

In the image you can see the tanks (in blue) where the wastewater produced by the Fukushima plant is stored.

A diplomatic scale mess

However, the tailored consequences not only remained on the economic level but have escalated to the diplomatic one.

This Monday the 28th, the Japanese Government summoned the Chinese ambassador in Tokyo to protest the campaign of telephone harassment that has been unleashed once morest Japanese companies and that presumably would be being orchestrated from the Chinese Government.

According to a statement from the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Vice Foreign Minister Masataka Okano met with Ambassador Wu Jianghao to convey Tokyo’s concerns and urge him to inform its citizens instead of “uselessly arousing people’s concern by giving information that does not They have a scientific basis.

All this occurs following videos went viral on social networks in which Chinese netizens are seen calling Japanese numbers. According to the Japanese public radio NHK, thousands of these calls were addressed to the Fukushima government and workers at the nuclear plant, who when answering heard insults such as “stupid” in Chinese.

Prime Minister Kishida described as “regrettable” the acts of harassment carried out by Chinese citizens once morest Japanese companies following the start of the plan to dump water in Fukushima.

However, the calls were not only limited to those numbers, since from bakeries to Japanese aquariums they have reported receiving thousands of calls of this type every day since the start of the water spill.

“Similar incidents have also occurred in China, once morest companies linked to Japan. It is extremely unfortunate and we are deeply concerned, ”says the vice chancellor in the statement where he stresses the suspicions that this would be orchestrated by the government of the Asian giant itself.

On Monday the Japanese embassy in Beijing tightened its security following it was attacked in protest of the Fukushima water spill.

The one who also ruled on the matter was Prime Minister Kishida, who condemned both the cases of telephone harassment and the “cases of stone throwing once morest the Japanese embassy and schools” in China.

Over the weekend, moreover, from the Japanese diplomatic headquarters in Beijing they recommended their citizens not to speak Japanese “too strong” due to the growing hostile sentiment in the country. As of this Monday, the 28th, there is a greater deployment of security agents outside the embassy.

This leads to the question of whether both the calls and the attacks are due to organically generated civil sentiment or if there really is a government order behind the actions. For Professor Carrasco, the actions might respond to a historical rivalry that has been fueled by Beijing’s position on the case.

“On the one hand, nobody denies that there may be concern to a certain degree justified in the population. In addition, in people, especially older people who remember the wars between China and Japan, there is still that latent tension regarding the actions taken by the other party. That might have led to this campaign of harassment or inconvenience of certain companies being carried out. However, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry spoke regarding the discharge of water and assured that his government opposes it. So, there the government established a position that is different from the rest. While the US, France or Australia support the method and others such as Russia, the Philippines or South Korea have expressed concern, in China there is government opposition. That might have added to social discontent”, says the expert in this regard.

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