The tritium dispute between China and Japan may escalate further

2023-08-30 17:40:34

Fukushima site

The discharge of slightly contaminated cooling water into the sea becomes a political issue.

(Foto: imago images/ZUMA Press)

Tokyo The dispute between China and Japan over the discharge of cooling water from the Japanese nuclear ruins Fukushima into the sea is intensifying. Now Japan’s foreign ministry has threatened to take China’s import ban on fish from Japan to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi said there would be no hesitation should efforts to ease tensions fail.

The reason for the dispute is Japan’s decision to discharge 1.3 million tons of highly diluted cooling water from the damaged Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant, contaminated with the radioactive isotope tritium, into the ocean for a period of 30 years.

China had heavily criticized this step and surprisingly imposed the import ban a week ago after the start of the discharges.

Shortly thereafter, attacks on Japanese citizens in China increased massively. Stones and eggs were thrown at Japanese schools, boycotts of goods were called, and Japanese authorities reported telephone terror attacks.

In view of the heated mood, the US strategy consultancy Teneo Intelligence is now warning: “The situation could escalate if China’s state media escalate their criticism of Japan or if Tokyo takes retaliatory measures in trade.”

The main problem for Japan is the import ban imposed by the government in Beijing, because the domestic fishing industry exports seafood to China for 600 million dollars a year. The newspaper “Asahi” spoke of a “renewed case of economic coercion”.

Pressure from Beijing

Beijing has long been criticized for exerting unreasonable pressure on other countries with harsh economic penalties. The G7 group of traditional industrialized countries even wants to develop a mechanism for countermeasures, because the list of those affected is getting longer and longer: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia have already been punished by economic sanctions for politically unpopular decisions that would not have been a reason for trade wars elsewhere .

For example, in 2020 Australia only requested an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, after which China halted coal imports from the country.

But it’s not just the fish boycott that’s causing a stir in Japan. The country also fears that the traditional resentment of the Chinese towards Japan will now increase massively again.

Japanese companies have seen massive abuse from China on the Internet. Calls for a boycott hit the country’s cosmetics and fashion industries, for example.

Panic buying of sea salt shows how much the Chinese are concerned about the Fukushima cooling water. It is feared that the product imported from Japan could be radioactive in the future, but experts consider this to be absurd. Collective fear is always good for the business of Chinese producers.

A post on Weibo, China’s Twitter, promoted using an alternative from the Tibetan highlands. “The salt present in the Chaka Salt Flats is enough to feed the entire country for 70 years without pollution,” according to the post’s author.

Anti-Japanism deeply rooted

Teneo Intelligence’s China watchers believe that the current outburst of “anti-Japanism” stems not from government propaganda but from deep-rooted resentments intrinsically linked to Japan’s history of conquest.

>>Read here, how scientists assess the discharge of radioactive water.

Only the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, the “Global Times”, sharply attacked Japan for its cooling water disposal in the sea. The majority of the state media was critical, but largely refrained from polemical campaigns. This indicates that Beijing is not interested in an escalation of the situation.

In Japan, however, government calculations on the part of Beijing are still assumed. The opposition to the disposal of the cooling water is a hypocritical attempt to generate diplomatic pressure, so the criticism. The government in Tokyo repeatedly refers to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, after Japan’s plan meets international standards.

Labor in Fukushima

Here cleaned water samples are examined for their radioactivity.

(Photo: AP)

The cooling water from the three melted reactor cores is first cleaned of 62 radioactive isotopes. Only tritium cannot be filtered out yet. However, it is diluted so much that the radioactivity is only one seventh of the limit value for drinking water.

According to the Japanese government, Beijing is also hiding the fact that many Chinese power plants emit far more tritium into the environment than the Fukushima nuclear ruins. There, 22 billion becquerels of tritium are to be discharged into the ocean each year.

In return, Beijing points out that the comparison is flawed. Because in Japan, the cooling water came into contact with molten fuel and was therefore more dangerous.

The dispute over the sewage is now possibly burdening the tentative rapprochement between the two hostile countries. There are increasing indications that China and Japan could again be planning a bilateral summit after a long break. Possibly, political observers speculate, that Beijing’s protest is primarily about building up bargaining chips for such a top-level meeting.

More: Politicizing Resentment: Why Japan’s Fukushima Plan Is Causing Protests in China and South Korea