On the afternoon of 11 March 2011, Tetsu Nozaki watched helplessly as a wall of water crashed into his boats in Onahama, a small fishing port on Japan’s Pacific coast.
Nozaki lost three of his seven vessels in one of the worst tsunamis in Japan’s history, part of a triple disaster in which 18,000 people died. But the torment for Nozaki and his fellow fishermen didn’t end there. The resulting triple meltdown at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant forced the evacuation of more than 150,000 people and sent a plume of radiation into the air and sea.
It also came close to crippling the region’s fishing industry.
Having spent the past eight years rebuilding, the Fukushima fishing fleet is now confronting yet another menace the increasing likelihood that the nuclear plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), will dump huge quantities of radioactive water into the ocean.
We strongly oppose any plans to discharge the water into the sea, Nozaki, head of Fukushima prefecture’s federation of fisheries cooperatives, told the Guardian.
Nozaki said local fishermen had walked through brick walls to rebuild their industry and confront what they say are harmful rumours about the safety of their seafood. Last year’s catch was just 16% of pre-crisis levels, partly because of the public’s reluctance to eat fish caught off Fukushima.
Currently, just over one million tonnes of contaminated water is held in almost 1,000 tanks at Fukushima Daiichi, but the utility has warned that it will run out of space by the summer of 2022.
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