On April 13th, the Japanese government officially decided to discharge wastewater from the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean, causing vehement opposition from many sides. However, the United States claimed Japan is “open and transparent”.
But behind the U.S. “solidarity” with Japan, the U.S. banned some Japanese food into the country.
On April 12, local time, outside the Prime Minister’s Office in Tokyo, local people held a rally to protest the Japanese government’s plan to discharge wastewater from the disaster-stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea.
United States Department of State spokesperson Ned Price said that in response to the Japanese government’s decision to announce the discharge of wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea, the U.S. side believes that the Japanese measures “appear to meet globally accepted standards of nuclear safety. “
The FDA stressed that “because of public health concerns related to radiation and nuclear contamination, the FDA has increased its oversight of Japanese regulated products.”
The FDA also said that due to “radionuclide contamination”, the relevant authorities should detain Japanese products without the need for inspection.
According to the FDA announcement, the Japanese food products include milk, dried milk products; fish, sea urchin, clams, and other marine biological products; meat, meat products, and poultry; vegetables, mushrooms, kiwi fruit, etc., involving Aomori Prefecture, Fukushima Prefecture, Ibaraki Prefecture, Iwate Prefecture, Niigata Prefecture, and many other places.
After the Japanese government announced the decision to discharge nuclear wastewater into the sea, the U.S. Secretary of State Blinken went as far as to “thank” Japan on social media for its “open and transparent” efforts in the process of deciding on a solution plan.
Some people point out one of the reasons that the U.S. openly supports the Japanese, is the U.S.-Japan alliance considerations. Experts say this is a bad geopolitical show that sends the wrong signal that “politics and public opinion can cleanse all terrible things”.
On the other hand, some also suggest that the West’s tolerance of Japan’s discharge of nuclear waste into the ocean is related to their own “antecedents” of the last century.
Before the international treaty banning the dumping of nuclear waste into the ocean came into force in 1994, the United States, Britain, and others had been using the ocean as a dumping site, dumping enormous amounts of solid and liquid nuclear waste, causing irreparable damage to the marine environment.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), between 1946 and 1993, 13 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, dumped over 200,000 tons of solid nuclear waste into the ocean, with the United States alone dumping at least 190,000 cubic meters of radioactive material into the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
That explains a lot about the U.S government supporting the Japanese government’s decision. And supporting while banning, wow, typical U.S. double standard moves.
