ECOCIDE
noun
destruction of the natural environment,
especially when deliberate.

FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR DISASTER

(March 11, 2011 – Japan)

Prime Minister Suga

(Treated Radioactive Water, 2020)

(Prime Minister Suga holding a bottle of treated radioactive water
and was affirmed “after diluting it would be drinkable”. Fukushima plant, 2020.)

The Official Story

YOSHIHIDE SUGA
(Prime Minister of Japan, 2020-2021)

Yoshihide Suga (Suga Yoshihide, born 6 December 1948) is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2020 to 2021. He had served as Chief Cabinet Secretary during the second administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe from 2012 to 2020. During Abe’s first administration, Suga served as Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications from 2006 to 2007.

Born to a family of strawberry farmers in rural Akita Prefecture, during the Allied occupation of Japan, Suga moved to Tokyo after graduating from high school, where he enrolled in Hosei University. Shortly after graduating with a Bachelor of Laws, Suga became an aide to Representative Hikosaburo Okonogi in 1975, before entering politics himself when he was elected to the Yokohama Municipal Assembly in 1987. In the 1996 election, Suga was elected to the House of Representatives, representing Kanagawa’s 2nd district as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

During his time in the Diet, Suga became a close ally of then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe. When Abe first became Prime Minister in 2006, he appointed Suga to the Cabinet as Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications. Suga left the Cabinet a year later, but after the LDP won the 2012 election, Suga was appointed Chief Cabinet Secretary, a role he would hold throughout Abe’s second term as Prime Minister. This made him the longest-serving Chief Cabinet Secretary in Japanese history. In September 2020, after Abe announced that he would resign due to health concerns, Suga declared his candidacy in the subsequent LDP leadership election. Widely considered the frontrunner, Suga comfortably won the election on 14 September with 70% of the vote. Two days later, he was formally elected Prime Minister by the Diet and appointed by Emperor Naruhito, making him the first new Prime Minister of the Reiwa era.

After his election as LDP leader, Suga stated that his premiership would focus on continuing the economic policies and goals of the Abe administration, including adding a new clause to Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution legitimizing the existence of Japan Self-Defense Forces, and securing the release of Japanese abductees from North Korea. Suga’s premiership focused primarily on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, including overseeing the rollout of vaccines in the country. Suga’s time in office also saw the holding of the delayed 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo and the announcement of a plan for Japan to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

While Suga began his time in office relatively popular, his approval ratings quickly fell due to public dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and management of the delayed Olympic Games. By the end of Suga’s premiership, he was recording some of the lowest approval ratings in Japanese history. Facing hesitancy from his party amid preparation for the 2021 LDP leadership election and upcoming 2021 general election, Suga announced on 3 September 2021 that because of the dissatisfaction shown from members of the Liberal Democratic Party he would resign as President of his party which would become effective on 30 September 2021. His tenure officially ended on 4 October 2021 after he was succeeded by Fumio Kishida.

Discharge of radioactive water to ocean by dumping (Government final approval in 2021)

Since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the nuclear plant has accumulated 1.25 million tonnes of waste water, stored in 1,061 tanks on the land of the nuclear plant, as of March 2021. It will run out of land for water tanks by 2022. It has been suggested the government could have solved the problem by allocating more land surrounding the power plant for water tanks, since the surrounding area had been designated as unsuitable for humans. Regardless, the government was reluctant to act. Mainichi Shimbun criticized the government for showing “no sincerity” in “unilaterally push[ing] through with the logic that there will no longer be enough storage space”

On 13 April 2021, the Cabinet of Prime Minister Suga unanimously approved that TEPCO dump the stored water to the Pacific Ocean over a course of 30 years. The Cabinet asserted the dumped water will be treated and diluted to drinkable standard. The idea of dumping had been floated by Japanese experts and officials as early as June 2016.

Treatment of water (2013-)

Water dumped before 2013 was not treated. Water treatment began in March 2013 as “Advanced Liquid Processing System” (ALPS) became operable. ALPS was designed to remove radionuclides; however, it cannot remove tritium, an isotope of hydrogen.

The treatment process began by pouring 400 metric tonnes of water everyday into the damaged reactor buildings to cool them from nuclear meltdown. In addition, another 400 metric tonnes of groundwater was seeping into the basements of buildings and became radioactive contaminated each day. Therefore, 800 tonnes of water was pumped out every day and treated for caesium removal and desalination. While half of the water pumped out was reused for cooling the reactors, the remaining 400 tonnes ended up in storage tanks. As of 2020, the resulted contaminated water reduced to 170 metric tonnes per day. 20% of the water had been treated to the required level as of September 2018, according to TEPCO.

Source: Wikipedia