from Hacker News

Seafood banned after Japan starts releasing Fukushima nuclear wastewater

by devy on 8/24/23, 3:36 PM with 21 comments

• by elihu on 8/24/23, 3:53 PM

  Banned by China. Probably more of a political/economic move than a real safety concern.

• by tommiegannert on 8/24/23, 6:07 PM

  Meanwhile:

  > Switzerland will lift all restrictions on imports of Japanese food products from Aug. 15, Swiss Ambassador to Japan Andreas Baum has said.

  > The EU has announced that it will completely abolish import restrictions from Aug. 3. After Switzerland lifts its restrictions, there will be 10 countries and regions that still have them in place, including South Korea and China.

  https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/world/europe/20230801-126804...

• by bell-cot on 8/24/23, 4:10 PM

  Other than "complete idiots", is there some reason why they couldn't have bought a surplus supertanker, and used that to dump the wastewater on a remote & ~lifeless abyssal plain somewhere? If properly mixed with brine, the wastewater would be dense enough to stay down there for ~centuries.

• by EA-3167 on 8/24/23, 3:51 PM

  I always find it exhausting and disappointing when I'm confronted with the reality that so few people understand anything about radiation. The dose here is so phenomenally small, the half life so brief, the rate of dilution so high that this is a non-issue. Recently there was an article about a fish that was caught in the region with a dose of Cesium in the area of 18,000 Becquerels per kg. The media and social media take on that was essentially, "OMG that number is so big! How quickly would you die if you ate it?"

  If you ate a whole kilogram of that fish it would be the equivalent of eating between 4-5 bananas.

• by throwaway2037 on 8/24/23, 11:23 PM

  The correct title: <<China bans seafood from Japan after the Fukushima nuclear plant begins its wastewater release>>