China Accused of 'Coordinated Disinformation Campaign' About Fukushima Waste Wat...

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• Re:

  That would actually be pretty cool.

• Re:

  China is also investing in nuclear power so it's not like they can complain if Japan does the same.

  https://www.world-nuclear-news... [world-nuclear-news.org]

  Japan's release of radioactive water is being overblown. The radioactive material is tritium, a naturally occurring isotope, in very diluted quantities so hardly a threat to anyone. It would be wise for China to keep their mouth shut on any tritium release because they may find themselves in need of disposing of dilute tritium in the future. They are setting a precedent on t

  • by quenda ( 644621 ) on Sunday September 03, 2023 @08:48PM (#63820768)

    China... may find themselves in need of disposing of dilute tritium in the future.

    They already are. Not much at 70 TBq/ year (200mg), but about the same as Japan will be releasing. Chinese gov't hypocrisy is astounding, as always.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    France releases 100x as much, and its not a big deal. Would not want it in my local lake, but "a drop in the ocean" changes nothing.

    • Re:

      It's okay as long as the TEPCO measurements are correct, and as long as it is diluted properly. Personally I do trust the Japanese government to make sure TEPCO does it properly and isn't lying about the readings, but the Chinese and Koreans were never going to.

      • 1 hidden comment

      • Re:

        The concern here is that the Japanese government has never made sure Tepco did anything properly before. Trust if you must, but verify. Which, frankly, means not trusting... so DO NOT TRUST A GOVERNMENT. Or, hey, A CORPORATION. And here you are trusting BOTH. Based solely on prior experience, that is COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED. Every single statement Tepco issued about Fukushima was a lie. The situation was always more severe than they claimed, and in most cases they knew it, while in other cases they should have

• Re:

  You seem to be confused.

  American people are much much worse than Chinese people [ourworldindata.org]

  And if you're on of those retards who thinks number of people doesn't matter and America should pollute only as much as monarco.
  America the country is the undisputed world champion at CO2 pollution anyway. [ourworldindata.org]

  • Re: hypocrites

    First, it's not as big of a gap as you're making it out to be. Third, notice how closely grouped the other two are, and what they have in common both in terms of population density and economic strength. Third, that's not pollution, and notice the very clear downward trajectory of the US along with the clear upward trajectory of China.

    Most importantly, not a single US city falls within the top 1000 most polluted cities in the world. Meanwhile, ALL of China's major cities do, as do ALL of India's major citie

    • 1 hidden comment

    • • Re: hypocrites

        no it's not a fact with your graph of guessed and unsubstantiated fake data going back to 1750. China emits more than 2.5 times the USA in the present. Soon enough India will be doing the same and anything the USA does already doesn't matter.

        • 2 hidden comments

      • Re: hypocrites

        Except your first link doesn't even agree with that assessment. Look at who is at the top; it's not America.

        • 1 hidden comment

• Re:

  Its not about pushing any ideological or political position. Its about destablizing. They've been caught out running an anti aboriginal voice campaign in australia, despite the fact they love to portray themselves as the big dogs in the anti-colonial game. They dont give a shit about aboriginals, either pro or against, they just want australia to be politically unstable like the russians managed to pull off in the united states by turning the usual left-right debate up to 11 with social media spam and other

• Re:

  If you adjust the pollution into "per capita", I believe you'll find the US is the most polluting country. China has about 5 times the population of the US and "only" pollutes a bit more than double. Also a (large?) portion of China's pollution is generated by factories building cheep goods for the US. With that said, I'm afraid Japan has no other option but to dump the water, and, given that they are big on fishing, i hope they did their calculation correctly and will cause as little harm as possible.

  • Re:

    You could but it has already been decided that "per capita" in the pollution department doesn't matter. What matters is over all pollution. The only thing that "per capita" is good for is to bash other countries that are not china.

• 2 hidden comments

• I wouldn't go so far as to make such a confident prediction, but China getting aggressive because of the need to find scapegoats is something we really need to be worried about.

  I don't think the Chinese government gives a fig whether its neighbors are dictatorships or democracies. What it really values is order and stability, which is going to be one hell of a challgenge for whoever is in charge over the next decade. The economic and demographic problems China faces are dire.

  As alien as Xi's political values are to us, he is a remarkably energetic and politically savvy leader who rapidly rose from obscurity by skillfully harnessing Chinese anger, resentments, and feelings of entitlement and being disrespected. It's an open question whether *any* leader could navigate what China is going to have to go through without the government being threatened, but if the Chinese government decides to focus public anger and anxieties on some external scapegoat, Xi is the man you'd pick to make that work politically.

  • Re:

    ...he is a remarkably energetic and politically savvy leader who rapidly rose from obscurity by skillfully harnessing anger, resentments, and feelings of entitlement and being disrespected.

    Reminds you of someone? It didn't end well.

  • Re: China is building for war

    I'm mostly wondering when China will reclaim Outer Manchuria.

    • Re:

      That would be quite the thing. One of the greatest humiliations of China's century of humiliations. And the Russians busy fighting a disastrous war halfway around the world.

  • Re:

    Xi is what's known as a 'princeling' (sp?). Its the equivalent to being born to a billionaire who held political office in the west.

  • Re:

    China's major problem is it's rising middle class that is demanding things like rights, luxuries and a say in their own governance. That's why they keep having to invent things like "social credit" to keep them under control.
    
    However China is already in at least one de facto war, with India. It's up in the mountains which is why India has been investing heavily in equipment that can operate at altitude (I.E. helicopters and tanks that can handle air with a lower pressure and O2 content). It's other neighb

• Re:

  More US banks failed in the time it took for Evergrande to supposedly crash China's economy "in the next few weeks".

  • Re:

    Evergrande lost more investor money than the market caps of all those failed banks combined by more than an order of magnitude. The Evergrande collapse by itself is roughly the same impact as the 2 failed wall street banks in 2008 (Lehman Bros and Salomon Bros). Those collapse videos are pure clickbait but all is not well with the Chinese economy either.

    • Re:

      Really? The rest of the world hasn't seemed to have noticed that "same impact".
      
      Unlike Lehman and Salomon, which had worldwide impact for the better part of a decade. They also collapsed pretty much overnight. How long did it take Evergrande to collapse?

      • The Evergrade crash is in slow motion

        But, as with Lehman brothers, points to some scarily nasty creepy crawlies under the rock of the Chinese shadow banking system. Americans haven't noticed because most Americans are totally ignorant of what happens outside the USA, and relatively little US money is at risk directly in the Chinese pending crash.

        Here's an article - which is probably paywalled - that tells you about it

        https://www.economist.com/fina... [economist.com]

        • Re:

          I recall there being a lot of talk about the shadow financial system from the Hu Jintao days.
          
          If anything, Xi's actions in trying to reign in control of certain industries may result in slower apparent growth, but will actually serve the country better in the long run because of reduced reliance on those sectors to make the country look better than it actually is. It's a slow bursting of bubbles.
          
          China isn't crashing, but more reverting to what it should look like without vacuous industries propping up

          • Re:

            Ah - another of those who can't believe that modern economics has raised well over a billion people from grinding poverty over the past 30 years, in marked contrast to the lack of success of state capitalism.

            https://www.worldbank.org/en/t... [worldbank.org]

            Is the system perfect? Of course not. But it's far far better than any alternative that has been adopted anywhere.

• Re:

  Would you rather have 70M excess males or own Australia?

  The OCPF policy was always a looming time bomb.

  • India has an excess male population problem without any one-child policies, and China continues to have a male-skewed birth rate as well as a very low birth rate.

    The reasons are much more deeply embedded in society (both Indian and Chinese), and are because of deeply embedded sexism and patriarchy in society. Until women have near-equal cultural status, social power, and economic power, male children will continue to be preferred.

    • Re:

      I agree that we should protect the rights of women, and that should include keeping men from competing in women's sports. Women should be more vocal about men pretending to be women, men too. If men can be women then there's no women's rights.

      The whole "assigned gender at birth" started with a bullshit study done decades ago about intersex conditions. If there's ambiguity about the sex of an infant then the parents and physicians have to pick one. Because there are only two sexes, and "gender" isn't abo

      • Re:

        That is nonsense. To protect women we need to protect all people. That will also protect trans people, and every other group or subgroup in the future, and save us from having to have this fight over and over again as society develops. "What, we have to treat those people like people, too?" How is the answer not obviously yes?

        What you're really worried about is women pretending to be men, and expecting to be treated like humans with rights as a result of their apparent masculinity. You're only protecting yo

        • Re:

          You can't protect everyone from everything. You have to make a choice. Either woman deserve a fair chance for achievement in sporting events segregated by biology for the express purpose of providing a level playing field or they deserve no such right. You can't have both.

          • Re:

            IMO the solution is to have both biology-segregated leagues and integrated leagues which play at different times of year so that athletes who choose to do so can participate in both. Some of these people might have to accept that their hobby is not profitable enough for them to get paid for it, though.

    • Re:

      Unfortunately, when and wherever that happens. Birthrate goes into ireversable decline. So if you don't also import a lot of people it's game over for your country.
      At least they all fail with equality.

• Re:

  China's economy isn't collapsing. People have been saying it is for a decade, but it isn't.

  Remember all those "ghost cities" from 2013-2014? They are now full up. China built them in advance of expected migration, which subsequently happened: https://youtu.be/vusLJShNIfE?s... [youtu.be]

  Predictions of doom and gloom for the Chinese economy are largely based on people not understanding it.

• Re: China is building for war

  ...and rightly so, since the USA has so clearly shown their intentions to start one. Who can blame them?

• Re:

  You earn a godwin point.

• Re:

  Just to remind people: NSDAP = Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, e.g. the Nazi Party of Germany, in power from 1933-1945. Poster evidently thinks they got a raw deal.

  Just to make some important clarifications, the Nazis were never elected to power. They won 37% of seats in the 1932 election, not enough to form a government. Their share of parliament seats was just a hair bigger than the Social Democrats and Communists combined. The overall situation was a mess, with 11 parties holding seat

  • 1 hidden comment

  • Re:

    And why, pray tell, do you accuse me of being friendly towards that gang? All I suggest is that, if govt X that killed many millions of people received their comeuppance, govt Y which also kills millions should get spanked too.

    For some reason we keep ignoring mass murder by pollution, despite folks ending up just as dead as with Zyklon-B or a lead injection.

    • Re: anti-nuclear bastards are mass murderers

      people in USA with pollution have life expectancy of over 77 years, people with no technology and thus no pollution dont get half that.

      Pollution has brought prosperity and longer happier life.

      • Re:

        *Facepalm*. Well, you see, I'd pick more prosperity, much longer, and certainly happier life without pollution. And Germany already had the power generation problem solved. All they needed was to drop fossil fuel usage to 0, while gradually improving technology.

        Killing others just so you can live comfortably is, well, not so good an act, but one that's widespread all through history. Killing others just so you can get some votes from kookiest part of the electorate is, on the other hand, a literally Hit

• Re:

  Did you just invent a new unit?

  • Re:

    Kind of. Not without precedent [giantitp.com].

    While it reeks of american-style measuring stuff in bananas or swimming pools, the comparison is actually relevant here: it allows directly comparing culpability of governments in question.

    As for accuracy:
    * took 21M kills for Hitler (the most often listed number); recent estimates of deaths by short-term airborne pollution from power generation give numbers like 5-8M/y or 8-10M/y; given the estimate spread a value of 7M/y is good enough for a sound bite
    * quoti

    • Re:

      People don't know what a Rad of radiation is. Using bananas is a clever way to explain things to people that don't walk around with a Geiger counter. Don't criticize others because you can't communicate well. Which is easier to visualize: 1500 cubic meters or 1 Olympic swimming pool 1.2m deep?

      • Re: anti-nuclear bastards are mass murderers

        Cubic meters is much easier to visualize. Olympic swimming pools don't fit in your arm spam.

        • Re: anti-nuclear bastards are mass murderers

          Arm span

        • Re:

          A single cubic meter is easy to visualize. When you're talking about thousands or millions, it basically becomes an abstract number.

    • Re: anti-nuclear bastards are mass murderers

      guestimates aren't facts. Use of fossil fuel has lengthed life, increased health and wealth. Go try living without its blessings and die in filth, infection and disease.

      You are hilariously wrong, ceasing all polluting activity would kill billions.

      • Re:

        What about redirecting current fossil fuel subsidies? We could easily drop pollution from power generation to 0 in less than a decade.

        Also, you seem to conflate pollution from power generation with "all polluting activity". There's more: cows, making concrete, etc. Heck, even in the Antiquity living anywhere close to a tannery was... unpleasant. We don't have solutions for a good part of those, and some are more tricky to fix than others.

        But power generation was already fixed. It's unsolving the proble

• Re:

  There's tons of things fundamentally wrong with every source of energy, it's just that people have been fooled by propaganda out of China and Russia to believe nuclear power has the more things wrong against it rather than the least. Russia and China are building nuclear power plants while trying to convince the rest of the world to turn away from it. Why might that be? Because nuclear power gives considerable economic and military advantages. Putin and Xi want to rule the world, and that will be imposs

  • Re:

    It's not due to the propaganda in Europe. It's mostly due to the incredible cost.

    This is just China taking advantage of a bad situation to make Japan look like the bad guy. Of course Japan very much was the bad guy in China about 80 years ago, and the animosity remains. It also helps Chinese companies who are competing with Japanese ones, in fishing, in the car industry, in video games etc.

• Re:

  Not really. People largely are not well-read experts on everything, especially people who have restricted access to open information. It's not stupid at all for the Chinese to be protesting this. They are being told what is happening is dangerous, and have no reason, and in some cases no capability, of thinking otherwise.

  There's a reason every nation in the world uses propaganda to some degree. There's a reason every dictator fights first and foremost to discredit sources of information they can't control.

  • Re:

    Yeah, there were an awful lot of "OMG radiations!!" comments on the Slashdot story about the release. The tone of the comments here is completely different, presumably because "China bad" outranks radiation in the minds of the majority here.

    You can give all the world's information to most people and they still choose to jump to whatever conclusion they find convenient. It's just easier than all that learnin stuff.

    • Re:

      Not really, no. Some ACs and low karma accounts perhaps, but all the well known accounts opposed to nuclear power (myself included) stuck to the science as I recall.

      • Re:

        I remember a couple of negative comments that I thought made sense. One I remember is that the concern is making sure what is being released is what they say is being released. I agree with it on the basis that Tepco typically lies every time they issue a statement.

• Re: Anybody can check the numbers

  Is this "waste water release" though? I mean, isn't this water that was used to directly cool molten reactor cores?
  That's not what I call simply "waste water release", at least not the same as is usually released, which is water that never comes into contact with the core.
  I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong...

  • Re:

    And if you actually look things up, this stuff is heavily processed and the minor amount of Tritium in there is simply the only thing you cannot get out with reasonable effort.

• Re:

  I think you'll find that there is no record of human rights abuses in China. Yep, they won't be keeping records any more after the last lot got leaked all over the world.
  As Orwell said, ""Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." So if the CCP says it didn't happen, and they control the records of what happened. Well, it clearly didn't happen.

  Oh, and the collapsing economy, housing crash, and those devastating floods didn't happen either.

  Now if the Chi

  • Re:

    Meanwhile Idaho just stopped collecting records of maternal mortality.

    • Re:

      Or while we're on the subject, there's no legal requirement for police departments to report centrally how many people their officers kill, but we know from other records analysis that about half go unreported to the national database.

• Re:

  But they do have a collapsing economy and an abysmal... oh wait, you broke my sarcasm detector.

• Re: China making up stuff - whaaat?!

  Typical western response. Can't you read? *accused*
  Of course, when it comes to China, for most hypocrite westerners, it's guilty until proven... actually, it's just guilty, no matter what.

• Re:

  This might be the most ironic statement ever? I really hope you are kidding. The nuclear industry is the victim of one of the largest propaganda efforts in history. I hope someday we get to hold people like you accountable for the lies and misinformation you spread and all the millions of extra deaths that people like you have caused.

  • Re: Cry my a f@#$%g river

    The nuclear industry should distance itself from TEPCO. This wastewater could have been used to make concrete instead of unilaterally deciding to dump their mistake into the ocean. They made a decision on behalf of the rest of the world after disregarding their legitimate protests in order to save money.

    • Re: Cry my a f@#$%g river

      Thank you. I totally agree with you.
      Imo most people who don't see a problem, or at least a potential problem, are blinded by their hate for China.
      There are many things that the water could be used for, and this is the most risky option (imo).
      I was wondering why they couldn't use it for pumped storage.

• Re:

  That's because most of the countries that have a lot of nuclear power are only willing to put up with the great expense because it provides materials for nuclear weapons too. By designating it essential for national security, it's easier to justify the cost and direct some of the defence budget towards it.

• Re:

  You are a moron if you think the CCP can control 1 billion people like NK does with 26 million.
  
  If your short memory can't recall, we've seen the most visible protests against Xi in recent years, like that guy holding a sign on the bridge.
  
  Just because those incidents have slipped your mind and the 24 hour news cycle doesn't mean it's over.