Tokyo: China announced an instant blanket ban on all aquatic items from Japan after Japan started to release treated radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. This divisive action caused international outrage. China’s customs bureau said it is “highly concerned about the risk of radioactive contamination brought by... Japan’s food and agricultural products.”
The plan was approved by the Japanese government two years ago, and the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA last month gave it the go-ahead. The Fukushima Daiichi reactor is being decommissioned after a 2011 tsunami devastated it, and the discharge is an important step in that process. Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the plant's operator, stated that the release started and that no anomalies had been found.
Japan exported about $600 million worth of aquatic products to China in 2022, making it the biggest market for Japanese exports, with Hong Kong second. Sales to China and Hong Kong accounted for 42% of the exports in 2022. Hong Kong and Macau have declared their own ban, which began last week and includes imports of Japanese seafood from ten locations, independent of China. According to South Korea, import restrictions on food and fishery from Fukushima will continue until public anxiety subsides.
Tepco test results stated that water contained about up to 63 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the WHO drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre. A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity. The IAEA also said its onsite analysis had confirmed the tritium concentration was far below the limit.