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© Thomson Reuters 2021.China, Japan trade acrimonious barbs over Fukushima tweet
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vanityofvanities
Japanese people respected China for their ancient culture. We learned a lot from their classics. Confucianism taught us ways and how people to behave, namely, about manners. In communist China, Confucianism was thrown away and they lost their spiritual greatness.
Desert Tortoise
The filth in the CCP ruined pretty much everything that was good and decent in Chinese culture. They have destroyed China's culture. The only thing left is raw greed and materialism. The people of Hong Kong call mainland tourists "locusts". Don't expect the same filth to respect anyone else's culture.
fxgai
China unleashed coronavirus upon the world so meh - no doubt some Japanese right winger is capable of making an offensive retort tweet out of that. I look forward to seeing some creativity!
Japan’s response to call for the removal of a tweet is wrong however, although I agree that China can go to hell with their propaganda. But we are capable of seeing Chinese propaganda for what it is.
fxgai
Well that’s just human nature. CCP has not turned China into simple free humans, it’s an authoritarian regime that suppresses humanity, not allows it to be free.
Speed
Editorial cartoons seem to be something no East Asian country has the tolerance, humor, or maturity to deal with. No wonder these three countries will never get a long. Lighten up.
kwatt
China can accuse Japan like this if China's nuclear power plants have not been releasing much tritium into ocean or river for decades.
Alex
A lot of passionate China haters here, what is up with that..
Bjorn Tomention
Pot ( China ) Kettle ( Japan), time the big pot shut up and cleaned up its own filth before launching into any one else.
Boku Dayo
Not so. Actually, we love China because they sent us that wonderful gift that we've come to know as
COVID-19. I say we give Uncle Xi the Nobel Peace Prize.
gokai_wo_maneku
Where can I see the print?
kyushubill
"A lot of passionate China haters here, what is up with that.."
The CCP is not China. The CCP deserves all the hate it gets, as most gov'ts do. Ask Tibetins, Vietnamese, Uighurs, Hong Koners, and displaced rural people in China about how they feel, and then ask your question.
Simplefacts
"I’m with China on this one !"
So I guess you agree with hypocrisy.
venze
The retouched picture of Great Wave speaks volume about the harm of the irresponsible waste radioactive water dumping by Japan..
noriahojanen
A (nother) cheap state-sponsored propaganda aims to divert the people's attention away from home nuclear powerplants and what they claim "contaminated" water discharged into nearby sea and rivers.
How about showing a Guernica in Uighur, Tibet and Hong Kong?
irreconcilable
If China is pushing the case that this is not common best use practice of the wastewater it's a good thing. That means for everyone! Seriously, where are the US and Russia! It seems impossible that they don't have a voice. Why is it China South Korea only? Other countries raising their voice about this horrible way of disposing wastewater is needed. To say South Korea and China are criticizing the releases kind of implies that it's revenge for wartime history which is nonsense. I welcome China's and any other countries criticism so long as they are participating in iaea to protest releases by accident sites and all nuclear plants for that matter.
voiceofokinawa
If tritium-laced water now stored in hundreds of tanks at the Fukushima nuclear power plants were to be treated to one-fortieth of the current tritium level, far below the health permissible level, which, Tokyo says, will be conducted under the monitoring of the IAEA, what's so fuss about it? Will Tokyo be tricking the world?
stormcrow
The other side of the coin is that China would've been dumping nuclear waste into the sea a long time ago had a nuclear accident occurred there. Still, it's no excuse for Japan dumping this radioactive junk into the ocean, but China has been doing all sorts of ugly things and whitewashing everything from Hong Kong, to abuse of the Uighur people to the corona virus. It's laughable to see China trying to portray itself as a moral authority.
HolaKitty
"The people of Hong Kong call mainland tourists "locusts". Don't expect the same filth to respect anyone else's culture." Hmm, I guess Covid/CCP/"Pro-Democracy" can be used to legitimize racial discrimination against Mainland Chinese people.
wanderlust
There are more than 500 versions of the Great Wave off Kanagawa on Pinterest, more on Deviant Art, and 1,000s on the internet; many creatively alluding to anime, coffee drinking, robots, ramen, AI, pollution, and even one on the MIT website!
It's called a sense of humour!
n1k1
China should be revoked the right to express opinions on anything for the next 100 years.
Hideomi Kuze
Japan's government, mainstream media or far-rightists trivialize nuclear waste water issue as if international criticism are from China and South Korea only, they try to divert eyes from dangerousness of dumping radioactive contaminated water containing over 10 kinds of radioactivity such as strontium or ruthenium or cesium.
ReasonandWisdomNippon
Damage done by CCP China:
3 million people dead worldwide and counting from Covid.
Millions lost their jobs. Business.
Tens of thousands committed suicide because of isolation, cirmustances.
Damage done by air pollution from China to Korea and Japan? Tens of thousands affected over decades.
Damage to Ocean pollution, overfishing, building fake islands and destroying natural environments by China? Check.
Olympic games was affected in Japan. We spend billions to host. Now we might have to cancel because of Covid19. Check.
Damage done by Japan Fukushima water release??? 000000 as of 2021.
-Fukushima Water will be the most inspected Water on Earth. Under the most scrutiny and criticism!
IAEA even invited China to join!
Japan following world order, rules already established on such issues. Other countries have done the same. More double standards against Japan on display from China.
noriahojanen
Some Hokusai works in digital format are public domain, free of charge. Aware or not, Beijing was able to avoid violating copyrights infringement for own cheap distortion work :)
I disagree, but the most funny thing is that communist elites have privilege to create Twitter accounts while ordinary people in China are blocked by local authorities. A slice of doubt or dissenting view against what Beijing says would lead to a one-way ticket to re-education camp.
tokyo-star
the point isnt about free speech or humor, and i agree that there shouldnt be an effort to remove this particular image.
the point is that it is so undiplomatic and childish for a ccp government official to be tweeting such images - have you ever seen senators or foreign ministers of other decent nations doing the same? no
the second point is that if anyone, especially a government position - were to post an image in a similar vein that ridiculed china, china would go into a rage and start screaming racism or claiming the hurt feelings of 1.4 billion people, slamming tariffs, or more. hypocritical much?
Fighto!
I am glad JT did not republish this truly sickening and offensive propoganda picture. This "waste" being released is perfectly harmless. The IAEA has said as much. Safer than drinking water standards. Fact.
Does China have zero morals?
rlaalswls
We know that every nuclear power plant in the world discharges treated water, but Japanese government keeps highlighting only tritium.
It should be noted that the reason this is controversial is not the tritium problem.
The contaminated water generated by an ordinary nuclear power plant and the contaminated water generated by an accident nuclear power plant are incomparably different in composition.And it was unprecedented to discharge contaminated water from an accident nuclear power plant.
This will set a precedent for all countries in the future, so we need to be more careful.
Initially, the Japanese government said that it would use ALPS to purify 62 radioactive materials, excluding tritium.However, eight years later, Greenpeace announced that 80% of the water treated at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant still exceeded the radiation standard, and it turned out to be true.
After that, even in September 2020, it was found that less than 27% of radioactive contaminated water met the Japanese government's emission standards, and that more than 70% of the rest contained radioactive materials that exceeded the standards.
And this time, the Japanese government announced that it would release the treated water to the ocean by reducing the tritium concentration in treated water to 1/40 of the Japanese standard and 1/7 of the WHO standard, contrary to the previous saying that it was not thinking of discharging to the sea.
This is by no means all done within a few years.It has announced that it will treat all contaminated water from 2023 to 30-40 years.
In the past, there have been cases where radioactive species have not been properly filtered. Considering the remaining 70% of contaminated water and the amount of contaminated water generated daily, opposition due to concerns about the treatment process and the management of contaminated water and treated water is natural.
We know that international organizations do not guarantee transparency. The corona crisis convinced it.China knows better and may be even more opposed to it.
We also know that it is also a contradiction to support Japan's transparency in the US, which has banned the import of seafood from Fukushima for more than 10 years.
I don't know how the IAEA will monitor the 30 years, but if the IAEA participates, there is no reason why neighboring countries cannot participate.This is a problem that will end once the Japanese government approves the participation of neighboring countries.
voiceofokinawa
zichi,
Thank you for the reference. If it were not for technology to remove tritium from water used for cooling reactors, how do other countries deal with this problem, i.e., how are they disposing of water used to cool reactors?
John Noun
China is right here, and Japan is wrong though, whether people like it or not.
OssanAmerica
This is all political. China releases nuclear wastewater unt the sea as do many other countries. The IAEA and the U.S. support Japan's decision.
Hiro S Nobumasa
China's depiction of the 'Great Wave Off Kanagawa ' is not accurate because vice premier Taro Aso said it's safe to drink those Fukushima nuclear waste.
Will the Tokyo Olympians be offered those da-kine safe water too?
OssanAmerica
Considering that China and other nations do it, and it's being done with IAEA support it;s really not that bad, What's bad is the genocide of the Uighur people, the repression of democracy in Hong Kong by breaking the treaty, threatening Taiwan with military force, claiming vast parts of the South and East China Seas in defiance of an International court decision, theft of other nations IP and technology, etc etc. Zhao needs to look in a mirror.
voiceofokinawa
The article you referred to says there's difference between contaminated water, on one hand, and treated water, on the other. Contaminated water is filthy water containing radioactive particles while treated water is the water in which radioactive material has been filtered out by a devise called ALPS. With this device, all radioactive material can be filtered out except tritium.
It is this ALPS-treated water that has been stored in about one thousand tanks on the compounds of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The government plans to release this treated water into the sea after it is mixed with sea water and diluted one-fortieth Japan's standard,.
A question remains, though. If that's possible., why has the government waited for so long, ten years, to start it, installing tanks after tanks until there is no more land space to install them in?
englisc aspyrgend
Political cartoons have been standard fare for centuries. Getting hot under the collar about such a thing says more about you than the cartoon. Get a sense of humour.
By reacting to this cartoon on an official level the Japanese government has achieved the CCP’s aim in publishing it and made it an international event, thus highlighting their take on the issue. Had the Jgov response been to laugh it of, treat it lightly and dismiss it as humorous but inaccurate it would soon have sunk from sight instead of being repeated around the world.
quercetum
We can’t further any of this discussion without getting into China. Who cares what Zhao thinks?
China aside, if you trust the Japanese government then it’s safe to release. If you don’t think it’s safe, what evidence do you have that it’s not?
John Noun
China and Japan also behaving like babies, though.
bakakuma
and Japan let China in as partner in clean up effort. China creates problems and doesn't solve them. Its like having a unproductive team member or bad spouse. Nothing good will come out of it.
Desert Tortoise
The Red Guards took our family home in Shanghai and banned momma, who was an experienced primary school teacher, from the classroom for the rest of her life. Our family was exiled to the boondocks to live in poverty. Momma lost fingers working in a factory and there was no compensation. My wife had two forced abortions before I met her. No sedation or anesthesia and the "doctor" berated her for complaining about the pain. The CCP are barbaric filth and our family knows this from first hand experience. What do you know?
Desert Tortoise
Japan investigated multiple technologies for removing the remaining tritium from that stored water. There was always some hope that a technology would prove doable on the scale necessary to treat the volume of water involved. Keep in mind that ground water leaks into those broken reactor cores every minute creating a need to be able to treat and dispose of water more or less continuously for the next few decades. That hope was always there but ultimately no suitable technology was found and the reality is the amount of tritium involved at Fukushima is a vanishingly small percent of the amount of tritium naturally occurring in the worlds oceans.
voiceofokinawa
Thank you for the reference.
That report by Greenpeace wraps up:
... the only acceptable solution is continued long-term storage and processing of the contaminated water. This is logistically possible, and it will allow time for more efficient processing technology to be deployed as well as allowing the threat from radioactive tritium to diminish naturally.
It is the only way to safeguard the human rights, health and environment of the people of Fukushima, the rest of Japan and the wider international community.
DontBeATool
Sad American & Japanese beibg brainwashed by their media fake news. I’m not from China so you can drop that. The difference between the rest of nuclear power waste water with Japan is that Japan waster water had touched the nuclear core while all others just pass thru the corr. Which is safer and less radioactive. Go do sone facts check before spouting nonsense. Use critical thinking people.
voiceofokinawa
It's turned out that TEPCO had to install tanks after tanks for the storage of the "contaminated" water which was supposed to have been cleaned and "treated" with ALPS. Radionuclides other than tritium, such as carbon-14, still remain even after treatment with ALPS, according to Greenpeace.
A question. How are then other countries dealing with the problem of disposing of the reactor cooling water that can't be treated flawlessly?
DontBeATool
“A question. How are then other countries dealing with the problem of disposing of the reactor cooling water that can't be treated flawlessly?”
Like so many had accused: They simply dump them out into the sea/river/ocean. However, make no mistake. Those reactor cooling waters “did not touch the nuclear reactor core”, unlike Japan which did which is more serious. So it’s not the same thing. It’s more toxic radioactive contaminated water on Japan case. They could either kept reusing the waste water on the core, or wait it out until all the radioactive chemical subsides slowly theough the decades.
If Japan not an island, it can cement the contamiated underground and bury it for centuries rather than flushing it into the ocean which will destroy oceanlife and we can see godzilla in the making.
Me think it’s America nuclear blackmailing China to give Japan two years for its decision to relase the water as a way for China to give way to US demands. I won’t be surprised if in two years US would reject Japan fin decision. Let’s see who’s right in two years.
DontBeATool
Simply put TEPCO don’t want to pay for responsibility and want to end the cost draining issue (it’s a co looking after its own financial first than the welfare of its people’s), plus TEPCO were caught lying by Greenpeace with their infos, not once but twice on records so it’s scary if you would trust them on safety for nuclear contaminated waters into the ocen unchecked. Until that time comes it could all be a ruse for nuclear blackmailing neighbor countries.
voiceofokinawa
DontBeATool,
Thank you for the technical pieces of information. We need such information above anything else.
voiceofokinawa
The difference between water stored in tanks at Fukushima and ordinary coolant water in other nuclear power plants is that in the former it is the ground water that directly touched reactor cores while in the latter the coolant water doesn't directly touch them.
Such being the case, Fukushima is uniquely different from others. Is that right? But how are cores cooled ordinarily in other nuclear power plants?
DontBeATool
Right. You can try reading this and this:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/national-international/10-years-after-nuclear-disaster-how-dangerous-is-the-fukushima-plant/2442368/%3famp
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/cooling-power-plants.aspx#ECSArticleLink1
basically the current problem arises because TEPCO cost cutting safety issue and negligence with bad design that caused power backup failure and core meltdown. Had it flooded the cores early on with sea water cooling the cores you wouldn’t be having this much of a hassle years later dealing with waste waters and unsure if the cores/fuel are still heating inside while trying to save it. Very bad decision making.
OssanAmerica
No just China as usual.
chikv
Meaningless bravado that will amount to nothing at the end, the issue is important and should be discussed like that instead of putting too much attention to this.
ReasonandWisdomNippon
So much trash not base on facts!
Do you understand that the Fukushima water will be tested before release??
Do you understand IAEA, USA, China, EU, Korea everyone will be there to test the water and make sure it's good and acceptable.
Dumb arguments going around about the water touching the reactor.... So what???
The water will be tested and if it's not acceptable it won't be released!!
Japan's decision is being based on Facts!
Japan's decision comes after 10+ years of research, it wasn't made in a day!
rlaalswls
The Japanese government has consistently rejected the verification of Alps treated water and participation in neighboring countries by experts from third countries.
They are cooperating only with the US and E.A.I.A. They also analyzed only 29% of purified water and said that the ocean release was reasonable, and that they would monitor it in the future.
The detailed plans and future progress have not been announced at all.
Of course, it hasn't even announced whether neighboring countries will participate.
And the US still bans the import of seafood from Fukushima.
voiceofokinawa
rlaalswls: May 4 09:54 am JST
The Japanese government has consistently rejected the verification of Alps treated water and participation in neighboring countries by experts from third countries.
Without understanding by the international community, Tokyo can't release the tank-stored “contaminated” water into the sea however it may claim the water has been treated with ALPS. So the whole process of conducting it must be wide open to the outside world.
That being the case, it's a very serious problem if what you mention here is true. Can you tell where and when the Japanese government dithered to allow any future inspection by neighboring countries?