During the first round of Japan’s release of the contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear incident the government released 7,800 tons of the highly irradiated water back into the Pacific Ocean, sparking outrage from China, the DPRK (“North Korea”), South Korea, Russia, Fiji, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, and the even the Japanese people with the Prime Minister’s approval rating dropping to 36% following the release of the contaminated water.
This is only the first of several rounds of dumping which the Japanese prime minister has approved of. If the Japanese government goes through with this plan they will release a total of 777,000 (no, that’s not a typo, seven hundred and seventy-seven thousand) tons of radioactive waste water into the Pacific Ocean. Marine biologists fear that this will lead to an unprecedented marine mass extinction event as rates of cancer and other harmful mutations continue to increase amongst marine organisms in the region. China enacted a ban on sea food imports from Japan and many Koreans and Vietnamese citizens are now boycotting sea food imports from Japan. While the U.S ambassador to Japan did take a bite of a fish that had been caught in the area that the water was released into on the first day of dumping, that is not equivalent to eating fish exposed to nuclear contaminants on a regular basis as many Japanese families who depend on fishing as a source of food will have to.
By Ernest Gulliver, on behalf of the Party of Communists USA Environmental Commission