A team of independent scientists hired by the intergovernmental Pacific Islands forum are questioning Japan's plans to dump just over 1 million tons of nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean.
Last year, Japan announced that wastewater from the Fukushima-Dalichi Nuclear Power Plant, which was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, would be dumped into the Pacific in 2023.
Japan assured the panel that the water had been treated to remove radioactive material, but panel scientist Robert Richmond, director of the University of Hawaii Kewalo Marine Laboratory, says the panel unanimously believes that critical gaps in information remain.
The information seen by the panel showed less than 1% of the tanks of wastewater had been treated and less than 20% had been adequately sampled, Richmond says.
"Based on those numbers alone, we're uncomfortable in making predictions of where things are going to end up," Richmond said.
Richmond also pointed out that even if 100% of the water was treated, there was no way to tell what it might do to biological life in the ocean.
"If the ocean were a sterile glass vessel, that would be one thing," Richmond said. "But it's not, you know, there's lots of biology involved."
Biology involved:
Now, I'll admit that I'm not as big of a fan of Japanese cinema as some might be, but between their anime and monster movies, I have a hard time believing the Japanese scientists don't know the dangers of nuclear waste.
And that's when other things the Japanese are up to started to make sense. The Japanese have added giant robots to their civil service.
They've built a giant, working Gundam robot.
And if movies have taught us anything, the apocalypse is about to get a whole lot wilder.
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