Russia yesterday said that it was suspending all Japanese seafood imports, mirroring a recent move by China over Tokyo’s release of wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Rosselkhoznadzor, the Russian agency responsible for regulating agriculture products, said that it was “joining China’s provisional restrictive measures on the import of fish and seafood products from Japan as of October 16, 2023” as a “precautionary measure.”
It said the restrictions would remain in place “until the necessary exhaustive information to confirm the safety of seafood produce ... is forthcoming.”
Photo: AFP
China in late August banned all Japanese seafood imports over what it termed the “selfish” and “irresponsible” release of Fukushima wastewater.
Japan on Aug. 24 began a first discharge phase of treated contaminated water from the stricken plant into the Pacific Ocean in an operation it insists is safe.
It began the second phase on Thursday last week.
However, the move has sparked a fierce backlash from neighboring states, led by China, which imported more than US$500 million of seafood from Japan last year, customs data showed.
The release of the wastewater has been deemed safe by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In all, Tokyo intends to discharge into the Pacific Ocean about 540 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of heavy water — about 1.3 million cubic meters — from Fukushima in a gradual process lasting into the 2050s, according to the official schedule.
The water has been treated to remove radioactive substances with the exception of tritium, then diluted with seawater prior to discharge to ensure its radioactivity level does not surpass 1,500 becquerels per liter — 40 times less than the Japanese norm for this kind of operation.
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