Arya News - Despite official confirmation that treated water from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant is safe, several countries and regions continue to enforce total bans on Japanese seafood imports.
FUKUSHIMA – Although treated water released from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has been confirmed safe, some countries and regions still restrict imports of all Japanese marine products.
China, which refers to the treated water as “nuclear contaminated water,” banned imports of Japanese marine products in August 2023. It announced in June last year that it would resume some imports of marine products from Japan, excluding Tokyo, Fukushima and eight other prefectures. However, the decision was effectively suspended in November in the same year following Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on a possible Taiwan contingency.
Russia continues completely banning imports of Japanese marine products.
Import bans are believed to have caused prices of the area’s marine products to remain low, and TEPCO is compensating the resulting losses, calling them “damage caused by harmful rumors.” Compensation is made based on the differences between trading prices before and after the release of the treated water.
TEPCO says it has paid a total of ¥96.7 billion for about 1,100 claims as of Aug. 5. Those in the fishing industry said most damages claims are filed by those outside Fukushima Prefecture because fishermen in the prefecture separately receive allowances for temporarily closing their business.
For example, abalones from Iwate Prefecture had an average wholesale price of about ¥120,000 to ¥140,000 per 10 kilograms before the release of the treated water. However, the purchase price remains low as China-bound exports have been suspended. Last year, the price was as low as ¥60,000 per 10 kilograms.
On the other hand, fisheries in Fukushima Prefecture have not suffered any substantial reputational damage as they were exporting a limited amount of marine products before the release of the treated water began. Currently, fishermen in the prefecture are aiming to recover the volume of marine product that is caught, which significantly declined following the nuclear accident.
In the prefecture, fishermen began small-scale coastal fishing as a trial from June 2012 until the end of March 2021. They are now in a transitional period, aiming to resume full-scale fishing.
To ensure food safety, fisheries cooperative associations in the prefecture set their own standard for limiting the shipping of marine products at 50 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram, stricter than the government-set standard of 100 becquerels per kilogram.
The prefectural government’s monitoring survey has found no marine products exceeding the government-set level since 2022. The value of landing from coastal fishing last year was about ¥4.37 billion, having recovered to almost half the pre-disaster level.
“Since people have emotions, rumors will probably never disappear, but we’d like to continue working to ensure scientific safety and earn people’s trust,” said the head of the Soma Futaba fisheries cooperative association.