Maybe intentional self-sabotage for the purposes of manufacturing consent? Or perhaps just simply pandering to their racist countrymen and colleagues. If you’re not constantly saying “China bad” you might get mistaken for an evil CCP shill, so its best to set the record straight before you leave.

Except this hurricane which was allowed into the US by President Joseph “Sleepy Joe” Biden himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzAm_kZ97qA

Do bear in mind though that the “cheese” isn’t actually cheese and is probably more of a pasteurized processed cheese food which is only about half cheese and half fillers and stabilizers and stuff.

Bingo. The IAEA can monitor things all they want, but a big part of the plan still involves taking TEPCO and the Japanese NRA at their word because they’re the ones that actually implement the plan.

It’s probably going to be fine, but even if it is, “I’m doing what I want, just trust me bro” isn’t how a reasonable government conducts relations with it’s neighbors. Even if they are right and even if they do already have the best plan (extremely debatable), cooperation, education, and building consensus should still be the next step, not unilaterally making decisions that piss off hundreds of millions of people without addressing their concerns.

Yes. IAEA is monitoring the situation and compiled a report based on their findings, but it isn’t their decision nor does the report represent an endorsement of the plan. I don’t think I ever said that it was?

Can you share what you found, either here or DM? I’d like to know more. I’d especially like to know how this stacks up to Three Mile Island where I believe they opted for some kind of similar vapor release solution, but Google tends to confuse with the accidental contaminated steam/radioactive gas release during the disaster event itself.

Correct, but the water is processed to remove all the other radionuclides first. The really nasty stuff that causes all the horrible cancers and radiation burns and stuff is separated and stored/disposed of through other processes. That’s the theory anyway, and based on the IAEA report seems to be the current practice as well. But this process is going to take years and since TEPCO is a publicly traded for-profit enterprise, concerns that cut corners and lax safety measures could lead to either untreated water or dangerous concentrations of tritiated water being released in the future aren’t unfounded.

It makes me think of hydraulic fracturing. Pretty safe when done correctly, but profit-motivated corporations absolutely cannot be trusted to do things correctly. We can only hope that the ongoing IAEA oversight is enough. Or that the economic backlash is enough to convince the Japanese government to change course to a plan that it’s neighbors can feel confident about.

Again, I just enjoy physics and nuclear energy though so don’t quote me on any of this, haha.

I wish I could find a detailed study on this but I’m not having much luck unfortunately. Based on my knowledge of undergraduate physics and chemistry though, I think it goes something like this:

Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen. Water is H₂O and the tritium here occupies some of those hydrogen atoms. This is why it can’t be filtered out, because you’re trying to separate water from slightly different but basically chemically identical water. If conducted properly, both options for diluting and releasing this stuff is quite safe.

But let’s say some untreated waste water gets released. The water that has all kinds of unpleasant isotopes and toxic heavy metals. If that gets dumped into the ocean, it enters the food chain and gets carried around by ocean currents and ends up everywhere. Water vapor is different through because the tritium is chemically part of the water. Caesium, iodine, lanthanum, whatever the fuck else, isn’t part of the water, it’s dissolved in the water, and when you vaporize water, the other elements don’t go with it (this is how distillation works). Highly toxic, really bad stuff, even if it was thrown into the air in a plume of steam or something, will tend settle out or get rained out near the source because it’s, y’know, heavy. Furthermore, vaporizing water takes more time and energy than just dumping it in the ocean, so even in some catastrophic failure scenario the rate of release of the worst contaminants would probably be much, much slower with the vapor option meaning less damage done before the problem is detected and fixed.

China and Russia recommended the vapor release option, which seems to suggest that the tritiated water isn’t their main concern, it ends up on their coasts regardless. I think that also is strong evidence that any articles or editorials focusing on tritium are sensationalist nonsense because if the tritium was the issue, China and Russia wouldn’t have wanted a vapor release solution either.

Yeah. Theoretically, the water that’s being released has been processed to remove all the nasty stuff though, all that remains is low concentrations of tritium. I don’t know the precise details of Russia, China, and Korea’s official concerns, but I suspect they’re very concerned with the possibility that unprocessed wastewater could end up being dumped, intentionally or unintentionally.

People love overreacting to any high-profile nuclear energy news, especially when it has a political character. The IAEA has a comprehensive report on this (https://www.iaea.org/topics/response/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-accident/fukushima-daiichi-alps-treated-water-discharge) and, while I’m not a nuclear energy expert, just an enthusiast, it’s all predictably mundane and low-risk and there’s many, many far more dangerous sources of ocean pollution that never get nearly this amount of attention.

However,

For one thing, dumping into the ocean wasn’t the only realistic option, vapor release was also an option. More expensive and harder to monitor, yes, but in the event of some kind of unlikely cataclysmic fuck-up (which has never happened in the history of nuclear energy, as we all know), the fallout would likely be more contained to Japan rather than distributed to every nearby country’s seafood supply.

That Japan chose the option that saves money but, in an incredibly improbable worst case scenario, results in maximizing contamination to it’s neighbors, was either extremely short sighted and stupid or intentionally inflammatory. Of course people in China were going to react this way. In all likelihood it’s an overreaction but it’s also a reaction that anyone with even a cursory knowledge of nuclear energy history could have predicted. Throw in the history of shit Japan has done to China and it’s no wonder that they’re furious for being expected to trust a Japanese corporation with their best interests.

That’s the real issue here, and arguing over the technical details of safety doesn’t address it. Japan had multiple options here, and chose self interest and cost cutting over cooperation with and consideration for it’s neighbors, and China is perfectly justified in being unhappy with that outcome.

You can get a brand new compact car in the low $20,000 range. But those kinds of cars weren’t really a thing in the early 70s as far as I know, so maybe they’re trying to do a more apples-to-apples comparison with a big ass sedan with a big engine. Even then though, I’d think $35,000 or so would be a more reasonable figure.

With that said, I’m not sure what $30,000 bought you in 1973, but $400,000 feels pretty low to me if you want to live anywhere near a city and don’t want to spend multiple hours per day driving to your job.

Yeah, I’m not sure if I fully agree with the author here on all of it but he definitely raises a lot of good points, and I think his “strategic consequences” section is worth consideration. At the very least, I think the strategy he lays out is more likely to be productive than castigating liberals for being wrong. Not that castigating liberals isn’t fun and not that it doesn’t have its uses but it’s not likely to change the mind of the target, but I’ve also seen strong arguments made that investing significant effort in attempting to win over what the author refers to as the “bourgeois proletariat” is a fool’s errand anyway.

Perhaps I’m reading it wrong, but the impression I got from the essay was not that it’s a conscious choice per se but more of a passive acceptance of what feels comfortable.

In this alternative account people aren’t “brainwashed” insofar as they don’t actually believe the lies, not in the way that we generally understand belief. It’s more correct to say that they go along with them, whether enthusiastically or apprehensively, because it’s actually their optimal survival strategy.

The point being, western liberals and such aren’t stupid fools being duped by masters of propaganda. They go along with it consciously or otherwise because it’s in their interest to do so. A big pile of ugly, depressing truths is a pretty immediate turn-off for a lot of people’s brains, especially when the reward you get for your trouble is accepting that the world sucks even more than you knew and that everyone around you will think you’re an insane conspiracy theorist.

Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason.

I can’t speak for everyone, but my gut reaction in my liberal years to seeing an article or essay I didn’t like was to retreat to one of my liberal circle jerks to feel superior about it. The psychological reward for reinforcing your existing beliefs is strong enough that it can quickly become a habit, and I have to be exceedingly careful not to keep doing the same thing but with leftist spaces.

Anyway that was just my take away from it. Colored by my own experiences of being a true believer liberal up until 7 years ago or so as well as my experiences of surviving trauma.