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radioactve
Tens of Thousands in Seoul: 'Stop the Dumping of Radioactive Wastewater'
'It is time for the international community to step in and call out this clear breach of the international law'
Sep 03, 2023
South Koreans have continued a weekend rally against Japan's dumping of Fukushima nuclear plant's contaminated radioactive wastewater into the ocean by holding a large demonstration on Saturday.
The protesters, including fishermen, activists and politicians, shouted slogans such as "Immediately stop the marine dumping of radioactive wastewater" and "Prohibit import of all Japanese aquatic products," as they urged the South Korean government to file a lawsuit with the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea against the Japanese government.
On August 24th, Japan began dumping radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.
The move resulted in a massive backlash across Asia and around the world.
While South Korea's opposition Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung calls the Fukushima release an "act of terror," the country's government under President Yoon Suk Yeol has backed Japan's decision, Deutsche Welle explained. However, the release is unpopular with the public, with more than 80% opposing the release and more than 60% vowing not to eat Japanese seafood afterward, The Associated Press reported.
According to The Korea Herald:
Democratic Party of Korea head Rep. Lee Jae-myung, on the fourth day of a hunger strike, said he would call on the international community to join his party’s protests against the Japanese government over the water’s release, in a press conference on Sunday.
“The dumping of the wastewater contaminated with radioactive materials by Japan is in direct violation of the London Convention on marine pollution,” he said. “It is time for the international community to step in and call out this clear breach of the international law, stop Japan’s misbehavior and stand united to preserve marine safety.”
The main opposition leader said he penned a letter to the heads of states and governments of the 86 signatories of the London Convention to collectively rally against the release of the Fukushima wastewater.
Xinhua news reports:
"Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater has the nature of trash," Lee Seo-yoon, a mother of three children, said during the rally, adding that Japan regards the ocean as the largest and the cheapest trash bag.
Lee stressed that it would be absurd to hope that no one would be harmed after dumping the trash into the ocean, urging Tokyo to store the radioactive wastewater on its soil rather than dumping it in the sea.
"The ocean is the future of my family and the future of our descendants," said Kim Sam-ho, a fisherman who came from the country's southern coastal Wando County.
Kim raised his strong doubts about the safety of the radioactive wastewater, calling for the South Korean government to take necessary actions including supporting measures for fishermen.
"The major purpose of nuclear safety is to block radiation from reaching the environment and people," said Han Byung-sub, a nuclear expert who had worked at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) and the Korea Electric Power Corp. Engineering & Construction (KEPCO E&C).
Han noted that the proper measurement of radiation from Fukushima, involving groundwater flowing in and out of the destroyed reactor, was not carried out, urging the South Korean government to properly measure the radiation in waters off the country from now on.
Following the one-and-a-half-hour rally, the protesters marched about five km in downtown Seoul to the presidential office.
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'San Andreas' Blockbuster Has Huge Radioactive Omissions
Ok. So we don't expect much from these mega-blockbuster disaster films.
But maybe just a hint about reality could spice things up. At least maybe a passing acknowledgement that the actual San Andreas could turn the Diablo Canyon nukes into a seething heap of radioactive rubble and permanently irradiate all of California?
Is that too much to ask, even of Hollywood?
Apparently so.
Jun 06, 2015
Ok. So we don't expect much from these mega-blockbuster disaster films.
But maybe just a hint about reality could spice things up. At least maybe a passing acknowledgment that the actual San Andreas could turn the Diablo Canyon nukes into a seething heap of radioactive rubble and permanently irradiate all of California?
Is that too much to ask, even of Hollywood?
Apparently so.
In a Hollywood high-budget Earth-coming-to-an-end flick like this one, there will always be a lame love story, totally improbable close calls where death is narrowly escaped again and again, and lead characters--male and female alike--with zero body fat who emerge onto the screen fresh from four hours of pumping iron.
San Andreas more than delivers on all of the above. The male lead (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) might be mistaken in some circles for basketball superstar LeBron James, who is six feet eight, 250 pounds--but who leaps like a gazelle and ball handles like a ballerina.
I knew this guy wasn't LeBron because LeBron and the Cavaliers were losing game one of the NBA finals to the Warriors elsewhere in the Bay Area exactly as we watched this.
The Warriors also emerged from that game with an improbable (overtime) victory.
And I hope you appreciate that I missed that memorable contest and suffered through the excruciating, sleep-inducing, occasional laugh-out-loud plot twists of this mega-melodrama to confirm just one thing:
Yes! In fact they did make a super-high-budget disaster movie about the eruption of the San Andreas fault without once mentioning the nuclear power plant that would define it all for generations to come.
In the film two seismologists discover how to predict earthquakes just in time to warn the world that San Francisco is about to shudder and fall.
The destruction of the city is actually a sight to behold. And an awesome tsunami does make an appearance.
Three words do not: Fukushima; Diablo Canyon.
Should we reasonably expect such a real-world accommodation in such a frivolous entertainment?
Here's what we know:
The San Andreas is 45 miles from the two 1,100-megawatt-plus reactors at Diablo Canyon. That's just half the distance Fukushima was from the quake that wrecked at least Unit 1 and sent in that tsunami to finish off Units 2, 3 and 4.
In all likelihood a 9-plus shaking from the San Andreas could reduce the two reactors at Diablo to radioactive rubble. As at Fukushima, we'd expect hydrogen explosions, maybe some fission, the loss of the cores, the cracking of the spent fuel pools, fires, mayhem, and apocalyptic emissions.
Things would be made far worse, of course, because we now know at least a dozen fault lines surround those reactors, and they were not made to withstand them. One, the Shoreline, passes within 700 yards of the two cores. The NRC's own resident inspector, Dr. Michael Peck, has warned that Diablo simply cannot reliably survive those faults going off ... and should be shut.
We also know that all those fault lines are interconnected. There's a hint of that as our scientific expert (Paul Giamatti) shows us how a previously unknown fault line in Nevada could touch off the Big One in California.
In fact, there's simply no way that a shock and tsunami anywhere near as big as depicted in this 3-D IMAX monster would not result in the state being saturated with massive radiation releases from those melted, exploded, rubble-ized reactors. Diablo's radioactive cloud would quickly blanket North America, destroying our food sources and our economy and ultimately killing millions.
None of this, of course, makes it into the film.
The reason is simple: imagine yourself a Hollywood screenwriter depicting extreme bravery followed by happy endings while everyone both on the screen and in the city where it's being shown are massively dosed by a radioactive cloud that will continue to spew for the next, say, thousand years.
Try to envision the dramatic possibilities of watching the vast majority of the nation's fruit, vegetable and nut supplies being hopelessly contaminated, and the land on which they're being grown rendered useless for millennia to come.
Then let's think about the romantic twists of radiation sickness setting in and millions of chiseled Hollywood actors realizing that their lives and those of their progeny have been forever ruined.
Let's throw in a few humorous moments here and there to lighten things up. Plus some flappings of the American flag and a stage right hymn to the exceptional ability of we Americans to "start all over again."
Then, when we've written such a screenplay, let's go get it funded.
So the rumor that San Andreas makes no mention of Diablo Canyon is confirmed. The spent fuel pools at San Onofre, Rancho Seco and Humboldt do not appear. Nor are we reminded that a tsunami far smaller than what the filmmakers roll through the San Francisco Bay would utterly wreck not only Diablo but all the fracking, oil and other extraction rigs along the coast and inland throughout the Golden State, taking the term "pollution" to a whole new level.
At great personal cost, I've confirmed all that. If you like seeing apocalyptic urban destruction and a giant tsunami wave, take in this film. You might want to bring something to read during the dramatic interludes.
But don't count on even a shred of radioactive reality.
And join me to watch Game 2. Unless the Big One does come.
In which case, I guarantee, despite what you won't see in San Andreas ... it will be "Game Over."
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Fukushima: We Must Not Forget!
Mar 11, 2014
"Forgetting Fukushima makes it more likely that such a nuclear disaster could happen elsewhere," said Mrs Tatsuko Okawara, one of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Fukushima accident that began on 11 March 2011.
Though she is right, the world still seems to forget.
The nuclear industry is trying its hardest to make us forget by downplaying the impacts of the accident, ignoring the fact that the Fukushima reactors are still not under control and claiming that lessons have been learned. Nothing is further from the truth.
So business continues as usual and in many countries the same mistakes are being made that played a role in Fukushima. These are systemic failures linked to the nuclear sector, such as a lack of independent regulators, no accountability, putting profits before the protection of people, insufficient emergency planning and the continued belief in a nuclear safety paradigm that has been proven wrong.
A truly independent nuclear regulator is a rarity as most are closely connected to the sector that they should control. And at the same time, decisions are made on the basis of politics and economics, rather than people and their safety.
Fukushima 2014: Don't Forget (English subtitles)Three years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe, the Japanese government insists everything is under control. But the ...
The nuclear industry still benefits from a liability system that shields them from carrying responsibility for the risks and damages they create. Big companies harvest large profits, while the moment things go wrong, it is the society and people who need to deal with the losses and damages. Those who are paying for Fukushima are the many thousands of citizens who lost their livelihoods; whose communities and families have been broken up; whose children cannot play outside because radiation levels are too high. The people who are paying are the Japanese people whose tax money is being used to deal with the crippled Fukushima reactors and clean up of the contaminated areas.
We were led to believe that the probability of a severe nuclear accident like Chernobyl was virtually insignificant. But looking at the real world, the evidence shows the frequency of reactor meltdowns is approximately once in every decade. Still, the nuclear sector uses the same probability assessments and procedures that were proven entirely wrong. Regulators continue to hesitate to properly act to reduce reactor risks, because stricter regulations would make the nuclear industry unprofitable.
The world is still running more than 400 inherently dangerous nuclear reactors and continues to build dozens more. Millions of people are at risk because, as Fukushima has shown, the radioactive contamination does not stop at a distance of 10 or 20 kilometres, which is the border of the officially designated evacuation zones. And still, nobody is prepared to handle a large-scale nuclear accident when people may need to be evacuated even hundred kilometres away from the nuclear power plant.
Nuclear energy is not a necessary evil, because affordable, safer and cleaner energy solutions exist. They are only a matter of political choice.
That's why we must not forget Fukushima. We must listen to those who suffer from the accident. We must remember, learn and act to build a better world.
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