edit: changed title from 'False Fukushima Fears' to 'Exaggerated Fukushima Fears', sacrificing my lovely alliteration as others have pointed out that it would be too much to say that the fears of radiation leakages are unfounded, but merely to say that this is the least bad option given previous precedent as cynesthesia has pointed out.
Image is of the large array of water storage tanks holding the tritium-contaminated water.
This week's preamble is very kindly provided by our beautiful poster @[email protected], with some light editing. In periods where not much of earth-shattering importance is happening in the news, I hope to do this more often!
In 2011, the Fukushima nuclear incident occurred. Since then, water has been used to cool radioactive waste and debris, which contaminates the water with radioactive isotopes. Currently, TEPCO, the Japanese energy company that is reponsible to Fukushima, is storing about 1.3 million m^3^ of contaminated water (equivalent to about 500 Olympic swimming pools for our American friends) in about 1000 tanks. Approximately 100,000 m3 of contaminated cooling water is generated per year to this day. TEPCO doesn't want to store escalating volumes of nuclear waste for decades until half-lives are spent. This would mean adding substantial storage capacity every year at increased cost and risk of tank spills.
The contaminated water includes heavier isotopes like caesium as well as hydrogen's isotope, tritum. Caesium is a big atom at 137 molar mass (we love our tremendous atoms, folks) while tritium is heavy hydrogen and has only a molar mass of 3 (pathetic, low energy). The TEPCO people are using water treatment to remove heavy isotopes from water, but not tritium. The large adult isotopes are easy to remove with treatment but tritium is incorporated into water, so it blends in with the others. The treated Fukushima water contains low levels of the big isotopes but still contains tritium.
Isotopes release radiation that damages the body's cells. The longer an individual molecule containing an isotope is in a body, the more likely it is that the isotope will go BRAZAP and release radiation that fucks up the cells. Bioaccumulation is a toxicology term for how certain contaminants can accumulate in the food cycle. For example, algae eat contaminants, then the algae is eaten by bugs, then bugs by fish, then fish by people. Isotopes that are bioaccumulative like our large adult son caesium are more hazardous. Tritium is not bioaccumulative because it is effectively part of water. Water cycles through bodies quickly - that's why you sweat and pee and get thirsty. 
Fukushima water would be treated and then then mixed with seawater at a ratio of 1:800 before it is pumped 1km offshore. Each year approximately 166,000 m3 of treated water will be released, which will draw down the volume of contaminated water being stored over a few decades. Real-time stats associated with the release are found here. At the point of discharge, water contains about 207 Bq/L of radioactivity, about 16 times greater than the 10-15 Bq/L background level in the ocean overall. Drinking water guidelines for tritium radioactivity range from 1,000-10,000 Bq/L, if one were to drink seawater.
In wastewater treatment terms, this is a small amount of dilution in a very large body of water. It is unlikely to have any measurable impact per the terms of Western science. In the context of mother nature taking yet another one for the team and environmental distress, this sucks. In the context of making the best of a shitty situation, the Fukushima water release is peanuts compared to the many other environmental liabilities that are not addressed. For example, the Hanford Site is an example of a nuclear wastewater storage facility gone/going wrong in Oregon.
Ending note by 72: By far the biggest impact of the release of this water won't be its direct effects, but those on commerce and international relations. Almost half of Japanese aquatic exports go to China, comprising 8% of all Japanese firms shipping goods to China, and they have now been cut off due to their anger at Japan. Perhaps this reaction and the cancellation of imports was inevitable, as nuclear power and radiation in general is a poorly understood, frightening, and thus easily exploitable topic in every country. China is not the first country to use a misunderstanding of radiation risk to try and achieve a goal - Germany seems very pleased with itself - and they will not be the last.
In all: it is unequivocal that China is massively exaggerating the risks of this water's release. However, the bellicose rhetoric and actions of Japan, South Korea, and America are a much greater danger to the region, and none of the three seem to be in any hurry to try diplomacy instead of increasing military budgets and gearing up for war.
It's that time again - every two months I give myself a week off, to rest and recalibrate. Your regularly scheduled programming will resume next week.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
what a quote. honestly when libs have been like "this is an imperialism by Russia! they're going in and killing everybody who resists or is Ukrainian and not Russian! do you think Palestinians shouldn't fight back?" I've pulled back from doing contrarian "actually, Ukraine is Israel in this situation and the Donbass is Palestine, and Russia is Iran" because we need less poor historical/current-day comparisons, not more, even if it feels good to make them, but if Zelensky's just going to do all the work for me then fuck it I guess.
yes but can you put this in harry potter terms
I think it's pretty clear that a whole lot of the current situation is due to miscalculations from both sides of this conflict, in as much as you can call Ukraine a side. I don't really know or understand what caused Russia to act the way it did, but I think it's pretty clear from the actions of their ministry of finance and the central bank, that they did not intend for this to be a broader reckoning with neoliberalism, and the central bank is in fact fighting tooth and nail to protect the neoliberal ideologues in charge of it. I kind of agree with you that Russia probably thought the easternmost parts of Ukraine would greet them as liberators, or at least expected some kind of cooperation from them, which has simply not materialised.
However I have 0 fucking idea why the fuck Ukraine is continuing to fight a war that they are 1) never going to win outright, and also 2) is rapidly depleting the male population, which is going to hamper whatever remains of Ukraine when it inevitably have to rebuild, when a ceasefire is signed. Not to mention all the privatization and destruction of labour power is going to ensure that any gains post-war by Ukraine are going to be hoarded by the ruling class and rather than being used to rebuild infrastructure, is probably going to be used in real estate speculation in Toronto, Vancouver, New York and Los Angeles.
I am sorry but I find the whole mainstream narrative about Russia wanting to “conquer” Ukraine or “force a pro-Russian government” in Ukraine completely laughable. Sure, they would love to, but can they?
Let me remind you that the post-2014 sanctions - the costs of taking Crimea and the downing of MH17 - had completely erased Russia’s post-2000 economic growth, and the post-2009 recovery. Russia’s economy was doing really well (comparatively speaking) until the 2013 Maidan coup and the ensuing Ukrainian civil war, when it was hit especially hard that took nearly 4 years to recover. (Ironic that the 2022 sanctions was a cakewalk compared to what came before that)
Now, do you seriously think that Russia wants to “conquer” Ukraine just to get a piece of land while inviting unprecedented international sanctions against itself, with its oligarchs losing hundreds of billions of their accumulated wealth? This has to assume that Putin is incredibly stupid and completely irrational which I am not ready to accept.
This is not WWI when the European imperialist powers were still carving out their colonies you know? This is an era of super-imperialism where one imperialist power has such pervasive control of the global institutions that it can literally seize the entire foreign reserves of another country and cut them off international transaction overnight and turn them into a pariah state. That Russia survived the current sanctions was a miracle, an exception and definitely not the norm because the US overplayed its hands. There is nothing Russia (or any other country except maybe China) can do to defy the overwhelming economic and financial powers of the US/EU bloc.
You are right, United Russia doesn’t care about the people of Donbass. That’s why there was Minsk - to return Donbass to Ukraine so they can make amends with Europe. At the end of the day, United Russia is a pro-capitalist party that wants closer ties with the EU business regimes and prefers a closer economic relationship with the West. It was the communists who never stopped supporting and aiding the people of Donbass throughout the years.
However, the problem for Russia is that this appeasement had failed. Not only was Ukraine not interested in implementing Minsk, the US continued to arm Ukraine via NATO and building up its military. After meeting with Biden in early 2021, Zelensky - who I remind you was popularly elected to bridge the divide between Russia and Ukraine - began to take a hawkish stance against Russia, which alarmed the Russian government. Rounds of diplomatic efforts ensued but to no avail. Not even two months after the failed Russia-US Summit in June 2021, the US boasted about sending Javelins and Stingers to Ukraine. You cannot say this was not deliberate provocation when Russia has continuously asked for peaceful resolutions to a conflict that is increasingly likely to spiral out of control.
By early 2022, mobilization of Ukrainian armed forces towards the eastern front (Donbass region) and the increased shellings of the area had to spook the Russian leadership. We don’t have the actual details, but it is not hard to imagine how they might very well perceive this as an attempt for a Ukrainian offensive, and felt that a war was inevitable, so a “now or never” moment for them. Either Russia takes Ukraine by surprise (and hopefully force them to stand down), or they themselves will get surprised when the Ukrainians invaded.
With that in mind, it makes sense why Ukraine would continue to fight the war that it knows it was never going to win as CTHlurker has asked - because that was always the plan. The Western imperialists benefited strongly from the war, by 1) weakening Russia, 2) deindustrializing Europe and 3) making huge profits from the energy shortage, military industrial buildup and the privatization of Ukrainian assets. The war was always going to happen.
Personally, I don't find divining the motivation of nation-states to be worthwhile. Trying to guess motivation barely works on people, so why apply this faulty form of analysis to nation-states? Nation-states all have geopolitical interests and will act to pursuit and secure those geopolitical interests weighing between short-term geopolitical interests, medium-term geopolitical interests, and long-term geopolitical interests as well as considering how international affairs have a dialectical relationship with domestic affairs. Some will aim towards setting up win-win solutions while others will not be hesitant in setting up lose-lose solutions if they calculate their rivals would lose more than them. Nation-states also have a history that you can use to predict their current and future behavior. This is also different from motivation to me because each action could have radically different motivations despite having the same external action and impact.
For me, there was never any credible way for Russia to secure western Ukraine nor did any of Russia's actions, even at the beginning of the invasion, point to them thinking they could secure the entirety of Ukraine. Even if the Russians killed Zelensky and installed some Russian puppet at Kiev, there would almost certainly be a provisional government set up in Lviv with effective control of western Ukraine which would be formally recognized by the West and possibly the UN as the real government with de jure territory that completely encompasses Ukraine pre-2014. We all made that joke at the beginning of the war that Zelensky was actually holed up in a bunker at Lviv while pretending he was still in Kiev. Besides being a pro-West anti-Russian stronghold, western Ukraine is also prime insurgency territory. It shares a massive land border with a country that's hostile to Russia (Poland) on top of being mountainous. At best, Russia can either directly occupy or indirectly rule via a Russian puppet everything east of the Dnieper plus Odessa with Odessa being heavily occupied because there's no way a provisional Ukrainian government would give up Odessa and resign to "free Ukraine" being a landlocked country.
As for Putin saying he wants to save the Russian minority in Ukraine, I don't find it particularly compelling in terms of its credibility and relevance. However, when Putin says that the invasion is one of denazification, it is far more compelling to me. When Westerners hear the word "Nazi," they associate it with anti-Semitism, but when someone like Putin hear the word "Nazi," they associate it with anti-Russian. Putin is making a case that Ukraine is not only a fascist regime but a fascist regime that harbors genocidal designs for Russian people and will seek to fulfill those genocidal designs given enough time. A fascist regime will inevitably seek to destroy their designated enemy. If the enemy is internal like trans people and ethnic minorities, the final solution is death camps in order to "purify the nation," but if the enemy is external like a bordering nation, the final solution is war until the external enemy is subdued and turned into an internal one, where they can then be funneled into death camps. We see this happen in the Khmer Rouge where the extermination of Vietnamese minorities living in Cambodia escalated to the Khmer Rouge massacring Vietnamese villagers living on the other side of the Cambodia-Vietnam border, which prompted Vietnam to do another great service to humanity by liquidating the Khmer Rouge.
It's exceedingly in Russia's geopolitical interest that a bordering fascist regime that wants to exterminate Russian people be put down. The fact that said fascist regime is being used as a proxy by NATO with the US's fingerprints all over it tilts it even more heavily towards something that must be taken of sooner rather than later. Putin being an anti-communist piece of shit who constantly steals valor from the Soviet Union while at the same time malding over Lenin doesn't change this fact. Nor does the Russian Federation being a neoliberal hellhole changes this fact. Do you think if the RSFSR was still around, that country would sit on its ass twiddling its thumbs while Ukrainian fascists impose Ukrainianization on its Russian minority and shell Donbass civilians? And if their action is going to be the same as the RF that we are unfortunately stuck with in this shitty timeline, then what's the point of highlighting the deficiencies of the RF?
I don't think you get what my comment was trying to say because I already said:
I'm not sure why your comment assumes that I believe the opposite. I also already said that even if they somehow killed Zelensky and occupied Kiev, there would almost certainly set up a provisional government in Lviv and "free Ukraine" would be recognized by the West and maybe even the UN as the real government of Ukraine. I'm mostly on the side of "calling it a feint is just Russian cope," but even the most optimistic Russian supporter wouldn't believe people in Lviv would welcome Russian troops with open arms lol. That isn't even Dugin-tier fantasy. Even cringey MAGA communists wouldn't believe that shit.
NATO Cinematic Universe is such a fantastic pithy to describe the Western views and strategies on Ukraine. In the Obama era liberals were West Wing brained, now they're Marvel brained.