China News Service, October 19 (Chen Shuang) Recently, the strong typhoon "Haibei" hit Japan, and nuclear pollutant garbage bags in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan were washed into the river, causing concern from the international community.

It is reported that computer simulations have shown that the nuclear pollutants leaked from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 will follow the ocean currents from Japan to North America, then return to eastern Asia, and finally spread almost to the entire Pacific Ocean. The long-term impact is worthy of attention. So, what is the connection between the nuclear waste that has attracted attention this time? How are they produced and what harm do they have?

If nuclear waste can talk, they may have a long story to tell us...

Map: Li Xueyao.

We are nuclear waste from Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, and we are "monsters" created by a disaster.

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred in the eastern Japan region. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was damaged in this unprecedented earthquake and tsunami, and dozens of radioactive substances were leaked to the outside world.

These radioactive substances have contaminated everything near Fukushima, such as grass, soil, and even fine dust, thus creating us - nuclear garbage (radioactive solid waste).

Of course, we have several other relatives, such as nuclear waste gas (radioactive nuclear gas) and nuclear sewage (radioactive liquid).

Chart: Li Xueyao.

Although our radioactivity has weakened, we still inherited the radiation ability of our parents. The nuclear radiation we emit can both kill cells and have a mutagenic effect. In a short period of time, if the dose we take exceeds 100 millisieverts, the human body will be harmed. If it exceeds 4,000 millisieverts, it will directly lead to death.

In addition, the nuclear radiation we emit can also induce cell cancer or gene mutation, causing symptoms such as deformities in organisms.

Chart: Li Xueyao.

To prevent us from contaminating more places, workers in protective suits worked hard to wash away the garbage on roads and houses in Fukushima Prefecture, cut down branches, and dig up soil from farmland... After cleaning "us", they stuffed us into plastic bags.

Perhaps they didn't find a way to completely eliminate us, or perhaps it was too expensive to remove us. For a long time afterwards, we were piled up in abandoned farmland, parking lots, and even backyards of houses all over Fukushima Prefecture, and no one cared about us.

Four years after the disaster, under pressure from all sides, the Japanese government announced on March 10, 2015 that it intended to build transitional facilities to store us in two small towns near the Fukushima nuclear power plant - Okuma and Futaba.

However, because of concerns about harm from nuclear radiation, Fukushima residents were very reluctant to provide us with shelter. To this end, after a long negotiation, Tokyo said it would provide Fukushima Prefecture with a subsidy of 2.5 billion US dollars and promised to move us to another place within 30 years, finally obtaining the consent of the local government and some residents.

As of the end of September 2017, 1,139 of the 2,360 local landowners had signed contracts to ensure that 624 hectares of land would be allocated to store us. On October 28 of the same year, the work of moving us into the transitional storage facility finally began.

Map: Li Xueyao.

On September 12, 2019, the newly appointed Japanese Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said that he planned to store all of us in the transitional storage facility and improve the facilities by the end of fiscal 2021.

Unexpectedly, just one month later, Koizumi's promise would become empty talk.

On October 12, the terrible typhoon "Haibis" hit eastern Japan, bringing record-breaking rains and floods, with hundreds of rivers bursting their banks.

In Tamura City, Fukushima Prefecture, some of our brothers and sisters were also washed away by the flood and entered a river called the Kodo River. It is said that after merging with the Takase River, the Kodo River will flow into the vast Pacific Ocean in Namie Town.

According to previous studies, if the relatives washed away by the water successfully flow into the Pacific Ocean, they will most likely follow the ocean current to the east, cross the North Pacific Ocean, reach the North American continent, and continue to flow westward. After that, they will split into two groups, one of which will even be boosted by the Alaska Warm Current and the Kuril Cold Current and return to the vicinity of Japan. Under the influence of ocean circulation, the radioactive elements they carry can be spread throughout the Pacific Ocean.

Map: Li Xueyao.

In order to prevent them from flowing into the Pacific Ocean, the Tamura City Government immediately sent staff to salvage them. Koizumi once said that most of the nuclear waste that was washed away has been recycled and should not have an impact on the environment. The Tamura City Government also investigated the nuclear radiation dose in the relevant area and said that the value was "no problem".

Despite this, the reporter of the Asahi Shimbun, Miura Hideyuki, who followed up on the report, posted on social media: "I don't think it can be used as a premise to assert that (the leaked nuclear waste) has no impact on the environment."

According to the Asahi Shimbun, in an investigation conducted jointly with the Ministry of the Environment on the 16th, they found 10 new "outer clothes" of brothers and sisters-plastic bags. This means that some of us have been "freed".

On October 16, 2019, local time, Miura Hideyuki, a reporter from the Japanese Asahi Shimbun, said that the nuclear waste bags salvaged by the staff were empty, and it was initially judged that the nuclear contaminated waste had flowed into the river. Image source: Screenshot of social media.

We can't blame us for this. After all, we have not been strictly "isolated" all the time.

You know, in Fukushima, most of us are still piled up in the open air without any shelter; there is no barrier between us and the river; the plastic bags that carry us do not seem to be strong enough or waterproof...

It is not just us. According to the British Independent, our "relatives" nuclear sewage will soon reach the storage limit. Regarding how to deal with this issue, China's former Minister of Environment Yoshiaki Harada said the day before he stepped down that in the future, nuclear sewage containing radioactive substances will "have to" be discharged directly into the Pacific Ocean.

In Tamura City, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, a large amount of nuclear waste is randomly piled up by the river. Image source: CCTV video screenshot.

Although Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga immediately came out to "put out the fire" and said that this was just Harada's "personal opinion", in fact, it is not the first time that China has discharged nuclear sewage.

On April 4, 2011, Tokyo Electric Power Company discharged 11,500 tons of sewage containing low-concentration radioactive substances into the sea. Yukio Edano, then Chief Cabinet Secretary, said that there was "no other choice".

The Tokyo Electric Power Company once said that it had filtered the nuclear wastewater, removed highly radioactive substances such as strontium and cesium, and left relatively safe tritium. However, according to foreign media reports, in 2018, under pressure from fishermen, TEPCO admitted that in addition to tritium, the nuclear wastewater also contained other radioactive substances.

Because radioactive substances can cause unpredictable damage to organisms, our neighboring countries, such as South Korea, have been paying close attention to the discharge of nuclear wastewater into the sea. On September 16, 2019, at the IAEA General Conference held in Vienna, South Korean official Chang Moon Mi-ok said: "The management of Fukushima nuclear wastewater is no longer a Japanese or Chinese issue, but a serious international issue that affects the entire global marine environment."

At present, it is still unclear what impact this nuclear leak will bring; and where our brothers and sisters who were washed away by the flood will go, no one may ever know; perhaps, this incident is just a "goodwill warning" we issued to mankind.

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