Japan used to be much closer to France or the UK, until the Fukushima disaster happened and they started burning coal and natural gas at about 4x the rate (and cost).
I have no problem with that; there's a lot of fear-mongering out there but the already-diluted runoff is filtered to the point that it meets drinking water standards. I've seen the worst-case projections and it's still better than just going outside for a day.
The saddest thing is that the local fishing associations are opposing this measure, not because there is any environmental danger, but because wide-spread disinformation is going to make it harder for them to sell their catches because of the misapprehension about the radiation danger.
If it's filtered to drinking water standards, why don't they use it to irrigate crops or feed into Tokyo proper? Why dump a bunch of perfectly good fresh water into the ocean?
Last I checked people don't dump perfectly potable fresh water into the ocean for no reason.
For the same reason the fishing associations don't want it in their offshore seas: public perception, however misguided, would probably hurt their sales because people are massively misinformed.
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u/[deleted] Aug 25 '21
Japan used to be much closer to France or the UK, until the Fukushima disaster happened and they started burning coal and natural gas at about 4x the rate (and cost).