1.3 Million Tons of Nuclear Wastewater Being Dumped Into Ocean | Facts Matter

Unbeknownst to most people, Japan is currently in the process of releasing about a million tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.

The reason for this stems from what happened 12 years ago, during the Fukushima nuclear disaster. An earthquake and a subsequent tsunami caused a near meltdown of a nuclear power plant in Japan. The situation was a complete mess: the reactors shut down, and the backup generators that fuelled the cooling system lost power, which then led to three nuclear meltdowns and the contamination of a million tons of water.

For the past 12 years, Japan has kept this water inside of the plant where they have been slowly treating it, but they have now run out of space. And so, the Japanese government has announced that they will begin to slowly release this treated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.

Now the big questions here are: is this safe? And how will it affect us here in the United States?