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TOKYO (AP) — The U.S. ambassador to Japan visited a city in Fukushima on Thursday and had a seafood lunch with the mayor, talked to fishermen and stocked up on local produce to show they are safe after the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, backing Japan while criticizing China's ban on Japanese seafood as political.
Ambassador Rahm Emanuel ate flounder and sea bass sashimi with Soma Mayor Hidekiyo Tachiya, talked with local fishermen, and visited a grocery store where he sampled fruits and bought peaches, figs, grapes, flounder, sea bass and other produce from Fukushima prefecture.
All of his purchases will be served when his children visit him this weekend, Emanuel said in a telephone interview from his train back to Tokyo. “We are going to all eat it. As a father, if I thought if there is a problem, I won’t serve it."
The release of the treated wastewater began last week and is expected to continue for decades. Japanese fishing groups and neighboring countries oppose it, and China immediately banned all imports of Japanese seafood in response.
Emanuel praised Japan's water release plan as scientifically based and fully transparent, which he said “stands in total contrast” to how China handled the coronavirus pandemic.
“The Chinese ban is political,” he said. An end to the ban “depends on whether China wants to be a good neighbor,” Emanuel said.
Radioactive wastewater has accumulated at the Fukushima plant since a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed cooling systems and caused meltdowns in three reactors. The 1.34 million tons of water is stored in about 1,000 tanks and continues to grow because of leaks and the use of cooling water.
The government and the plant operator say discharging the water into the sea is unavoidable because the storage tanks will reach their capacity early next year and space at the plant will be needed for its decommissioning, which is expected to take decades.
Earlier Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sampled seafood and talked to workers at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market to assess the impact of China’s ban on Japanese seafood.
One of the seafood business operators told Kishida that sales of his scallops, which are largely exported to China, have dropped 90% since the start of the wastewater discharge.
Kishida told reporters that he instructed officials to compile a package of support measures for seafood exporters hit by China's import ban, including an expansion of domestic consumption and new destinations for Japanese seafood to replace China.