I remember this being talked about and China opposing to it 2 years ago when Japan first announced the decision.
It should be noted as in the linked report, that Japan is adhering to UN regulations and diluting the waste water to levels lower than the IAEA standard before dumping it into the ocean. So before people rush to criticize, they maybe should also look into the regulations from IAEA and the dilution process before making an opinion. There was also concern for pollutants other than tritium which could be in the waste water that were not accounted for, but I haven’t seen any media reporting on that during these two years, so while I’d love to see a report, you can make of it what you will.
As for China, they really should take a good look at themselves in the mirror, bc as per their own official report from 2017, their own upper limit of acceptable tritium levels for nuclear waste water is 225 TBq per year, which is 10x more than Japan’s standard.
Not just China! That’s radioactive waste being poured into ocean water! What the shit! That’s so polluting!
If you read the article, you’d see that other nuclear reactors, including one based in China, release much more tritium into the ocean than Fukushima. So it’s a bit unfair to call out Japan here specifically.
That said, it absolutely is polluting and we should absolutely find better ways to handling this waste.
