Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and three Cabinet ministers ate Fukushima fish sashimi at a lunch meeting Wednesday, in an apparent effort to show that fish is safe following the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that began last week.
Kishida and the three ministers had sashimi of flounder, octopus and sea bass, caught off the Fukushima coast after the water release, along with vegetables, fruits and a bowl of rice that were harvested in the prefecture, Economy and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who was at the meeting, told reporters.
The release of the treated wastewater into the ocean, which began Thursday and is expected to continue for decades, has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and by neighboring countries. China immediately banned all imports of Japanese seafood in response. In South Korea, thousands of people joined rallies over the weekend to condemn the discharge.
All seawater and fish sampling data since the release have been way below set safety limits.
This is the most frustrating thing because posts like the one you replied to get posted constantly, and debunked constantly as you and other commenters nicely did. Yet they never come back to say, “Thanks for the correction!” or edit their comments to remove the false information. They just go on to repeat the same tripe elsewhere.
This is classical confirmation bias + Dunning Kruger at work. People like to think they know the facts and are hesitant to admit they might have erroneous information. It’s likely those that sprout misinformation would scroll right past over our discourse and see the next misinformed post and go “AH HA! I was right!”