BEIJING: China on Thursday strongly condemned the Japanese government’s commencement of dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater, as the Chinese Foreign Ministry made serious démarches to Japan and urged it to stop the wrongdoing.Â
“The Chinese government has always put people first, and will take all necessary measures to maintain and protect food security and the public health,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a regular press briefing on Thursday.Â
China has with immediate effect banned import of all aquatic products originating from Japan starting from Thursday, when Japan started dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater from crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea – a move by the Asia island nation that will be “nailed to history’s mast of shame,” decried stakeholders and the wider public at home and abroad.
On Thursday 1 pm local time, the start of the dumping of around 540 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of water over several decades marked a big step for Japan in decommissioning the still highly dangerous site 12 years after one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents in Fukushima Prefecture, according to media reports.
Although the move of dumping is a fait-accompli and the majority of the Western world remain silent, fishermen, environmental activists and the wider public in Japan and the world at large vowed to fight till the end and some have even asked Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to step down.
Given that Tokyo has used July’s IAEA report, which has lost its credibility, as a shield, China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) told the press on Thursday the move by the Japanese government seriously undermined the authority and credibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the health of the people of neighboring countries and the rights and interests of the marine environment, and the safety and development interests of the global nuclear energy industry.
In order to prevent nuclear-contaminated Japanese food from entering the country and protect the health of Chinese people, China’s General Administration of Customs (GAC) said Thursday it has carried out continuous evaluation of risk over radioactive contamination of Japanese food and has tightened supervision measures on food imported from Japan to strictly ensure food security.
In another follow-up measure, the National Nuclear Safety Administration of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) on Thursday announced that relevant departments are organizing the marine radiation environment monitoring of China’s jurisdictional sea areas in 2023.
Also the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs will step up monitoring of nuclear pollution risks of aquatic products.
The MEE said China organized and carried out marine radiation environment monitoring in the sea areas under its jurisdiction in 2021 and 2022. The monitoring results showed that the concentration of artificial radionuclide activity in seawater and marine organisms in the jurisdiction area of China was normal.
The direction of ocean current and the concentration of discharge affect the conclusion of “how much influence the release of nuclear-contaminated water has on China,” Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, told the Global Times. Ma stressed that China should further strengthen its nuclear radiation early warning and monitoring network laid out in many cities. He also called for establishing distant-water monitoring stations.
Zhao Shunping, deputy director and researcher of the Radiation Environment Monitoring Technology Center, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, stressed the significance of monitoring of radioactivity concentrations in seawater, sediment and marine life via the monitoring stations deployed in the waters under China’s jurisdiction and detection for key ocean current channels.
Zhao told the Global Times that China could also conduct ballast water detection. For example, some ships go within the vicinity of Fukushima discharge outlet, and when they return, we can collect and detect the water samples.
