Workers at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station work among underground water storage pools on 17 April 2013. Photo Credit: Greg Webb / IAEA

Japan has doubled down on the nuclear industry’s routine practice of spreading radioactive pollutants to public air space and to common waterways.[1]

In addition to the pumping of tens of thousands of tons of radioactively contaminated cooling water to the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima-Daiichi reactor complex, the government has announced its intention to spread around the country as much as 14 million cubic meters of radioactively contaminated soil, reportedly for road-building, construction projects, and even agricultural underlayment. Last September the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna — which promotes the nuclear reactor industry around the world — declared that the plan to disperse the waste “is consistent with international safety standards.”[2]