Are thousands of dead fish washing up in Japan after the release of wastewater from Fukushima?
That’s what one video shared in Chinese and Korean claims. However, it's an old video filmed more than six months before Japan even started releasing the discharge into the Pacific Ocean.
Transcript
00:00 There are thousands of dead fish washing up on the Japanese coast following the release
00:04 of the waste water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
00:08 That's what one video shared in Chinese and Korean claims.
00:11 Let's get down to the truth behind this clip.
00:19 It's a video that's been shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media, especially
00:23 by Chinese and South Korean users.
00:26 It alleges that thousands of dead fish are floating in the waters near a beach after
00:30 Tokyo started releasing waste water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant on the 24th
00:36 of August.
00:37 An earthquake followed by a tsunami in 2011 damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant,
01:04 contaminating water within the facility with highly radioactive material.
01:09 Since the disaster, the company running the power plant, TEPCO, has been pumping in water
01:13 to cool down the reactors.
01:15 This means every day the plant produces contaminated water, enough to fill more than 500 Olympic
01:21 swimming pools.
01:23 And that storage space is about to run out, according to the country's authorities.
01:28 And leaving them no choice, they say, other than to begin getting rid of the waste water
01:33 into the Pacific Ocean.
01:34 The release of the treated waste water prompted heavy criticism and panic from Japan's neighbors.
01:40 China banned all Japanese seafood imports recently.
01:43 And fears over radioactive contamination have prompted panic buying and boycotts of seafood
01:49 in several cities in China and South Korea.
01:52 By doing a reverse image search, we found the original video on Douyin, the Chinese
01:56 equivalent of TikTok.
01:57 It was posted on the 7th of February, 2023, more than six months before Japan even started
02:03 to release the waste water.
02:05 AFP managed to geolocate where the scene was filmed exactly.
02:10 It was shot on a beach near the Tsutsuishi Fishing Port in Otagawa City.
02:15 The city is located on the west side of Japan, so on the opposite coast of the nuclear power
02:20 plant and it's over 280 kilometers away.
02:24 A local official told AFP that about 250 tons of dead fish were found, but that the cause
02:29 of the death remains unclear.
02:31 For more fact checks and investigations, check out our website, yournews.com.
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