Japan has been given the okay by UN to dump radioactive waste water into the ocean, but nearby countries are protesting that its unsafe. Is it unsafe? Is it safe?
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Your bones are more radioactive than the water that is being released into the ocean by Japan. Ripping out the skeletons of thousands of people and dumping those into the ocean might be something that some people would find concerning, but that concern wouldn’t be over a radioactive hazard.
The reason that other countries are “concerned” is because that “concern” is a valid reason for restricting Japanese exports under the treaties that establish the World Trade Organization.
Any country that is a member of the WTO (which is basically every country that matters) has to agree not to arbitrarily impose tariffs or other import restrictions on goods from other countries. There are exceptions to that, one of which is because goods from another country pose a health or safety risk.
The *vast* majority of environmental or health complaints that countries make against one another in the modern world have no basis in reality, but are an attempt to justify an otherwise arbitrary tariff or import restriction that is being placed on the goods of the complained about country.
The current complaints about Japan fall into this category – the countries complaining about Japan are using those complaints as a justification to ban Japanese fish – not fish from “contaminated” waters, but all fish that originate from Japanese owned fishing vessels, or which were processed in a Japanese owned plant.
Japan is a major exporter of fish to other East Asian countries, and the purpose of these complaints is to benefit the fishing industries in the countries imposing the bans at the expense of the Japanese fishing industry.
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