By John LaForge
Japan’s Prime Minister endorses public spread of Fukushima radioactive waste
Japan’s new Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae visited Fukushima Prefecture December 2. One stop on her tour was at a temporary storage site holding some of the roughly fourteen-million tons of radioactive soil and debris that was collected in heavy bags and stacked in thousands of places following the March 2011 triple meltdowns. The PM said she wants to expand government plans to use some of the bagged-up radioactive waste in road building and construction projects, the national broadcaster NHK reported. Federal agencies have decided that the radioactive soil can be declared “recyclable” if it emits 8,000 becquerels per kilogram or less. (A becquerel is one measure of radioactive decay among many.) The collecting, transporting, dumping, and spreading of this material will endanger the workers involved, and will increase chances of public radiation exposures, as high winds and rainfall runoff can spread the material. The Japan Times reported on June 20, 2023 that a 5-year estimate of the cost of the program was then about $12.7 billion.
China reimposes Japanese seafood import suspension
On November 8, China’s government partially lifted its ban which was imposed in August 2023 after Japan began pumping radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean in the face of worldwide criticism. China’s partial easing of restrictions left in place its ban on seafood from 10 of Japan’s 47 prefectures, all of which were heavily hit with radioactive fallout from the 2011 reactor explosions and meltdowns.
Then, on November 19, following hostile statements by Japan’s right-wing PM Takaichi regarding the military defense of Taiwan, China re-imposed its blanket ban on seafood imports. In a related tit-for-tat, Taiwan on November 24 lifted its blanket ban on Japanese seafood imports and its Food and Drug Administration justified the move after it checked over 270,000 batches of Japanese food for radiation, without finding “problems.”
Waste discharge to Pacific ongoing
On October 31, 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had conducted analysis of the 16th series of radioactive wastewater discharges from the destroyed Fukushima-1 site, and that “about 117,700 cubic meters of water have been released through the first 15 batches.” The IAEA reported that each batch met its “standards” and that “monitoring data remained consistent with negligible environmental impact.” Fukushima’s owner/operator Tepco says it will take the next 30 years to filter and pump all 1.3 million tons of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific, but routine earthquakes nearby threaten to destroy the 1,000 giant steel tanks that now store the cooling water near the shore. About 880 tons of highly radioactive molten nuclear reactor fuel remain inside the three wrecked reactors. The rubbished fuel is composed of enriched uranium, plutonium (in fuel that was being used in Unit 3), and hundreds of highly radioactive materials created by the reactors’ operational fissioning of uranium. The melted fuel and surrounding wreckage inside the exploded reactors’ cores is so radioactive that it can only be approached and examined robotically using machines that must be controlled at a distance.
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