Hactivitsts attack Japanese government over Fukushima wastewater release
- Reference: 1691992689
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/08/14/hactivitsts_claim_japanese_government_attack/
- Source link:
In an operation dubbed "Tango Down," The Anonymous Italia Collective [1]claims to have attacked 21 government and other websites associated with the Fukushima facility, which in 2011 infamously experienced damage to three reactor cores after an earthquake and tsunami [2]disabled safety systems .
Some of the orgs Anonymous Italia targeted include Japan’s Ministry of the Environment, Atomic Power Company, the Atomic Energy Society, Nuclear Regulation Authority, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Science and Technology Agency, former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and the Foreign Press Center.
[3]
The Register tried, successfully, to access all 21 allegedly attacked websites. However, the EUTNAIOA presented a series of [4]tweeted screenshots and links to website monitoring tools affirming outages.
[5]Old-school hacktivism is back because it never went away
[6]Japan lacks the expertise for renewed nuclear power after Fukushima
[7]Anonymous: We've leaked disk images stolen from far-right-friendly web host Epik
[8]Japanese supermarket watches you shop so AI can suggest more stuff to buy
The attacks follow a July decision by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to [9]allow a million tons of treated Fukushima wastewater to be released, starting this month.
The water is present because the Fukushima plant creates around 100 cubic meters of wastewater per day the keep the reactor cool. Doing so exposes the water to 64 radioactive elements whose half-life range from negligible to 5,000 years – as is the case with carbon-14.
[10]
[11]
The waters are treated with an advanced liquid-processing system (ALPS) that the org responsible for managing the nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), says removes 62 of the 64 radionuclides, leaving just carbon-14 and tritium behind.
TEPCO has claimed the amount of tritium equates to 1,500 becquerels per liter – the amount [12]set [PDF] as a maximum concentration for discharge by the Japanese government.
[13]
That unit of radioactivity is one-seventh the amount designated as a maximum for suitable drinking water as set by the World Health Organization. Meanwhile, the carbon-14 content of the water currently sits at two percent of the upper limit allowed by regulations.
The treated water is stored in tanks at the site, but those vessels have limited capacity. Hence the desire to release and dilute the liquid by piping it 1km offshore for the next 30 to 40 years.
However safe the water seems to be, the EUTNAIOA quotes nuclear engineer Hiroaki Koide and points out that "diluting simply means spreading pollution over a large area" – putting sea life, and those who consume it, in danger.
[14]
Japan's pumping plan is enough to make experts in Hong Kong [15]advise testing of seafood before consumption. Japan's neighbor South Korea [16]said it will conduct inspections of seafood from Japan for 100 days.
According to the hacktivists, the Japanese government and TEPCO made their decision to release radioactive waters into the ocean "without adequately involving local communities and appropriate international public debate."
The group does concede that the government and TEPCO have made their decision based on the advice of international scientists. However, they have also asserted that not all in academia agree that the plan is safe.
The EUTNAIOA operatives have also accused the Japanese government of a propaganda campaign by using AI to scour social media for content critical of its plan and pushing its own [17]narrative that the release of the waste water is safe.
The hactivists also alleged that bribes were offered to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) staff to downplay the levels of radioactive substances present in samples – assertions both the IAEA and Japanese government have denied. ®
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[1] https://anonsecita.wordpress.com/2023/08/10/opfukushima-operazione-save-ocean-pacific/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2011/03/16/fukushima_workers_evacuated
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZNn7UjrihatoY9uoqYW-WgAAAsI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://twitter.com/search?q=%23OpFukushima%20%23TangoDown%20(from%3Aanonsecita)&src=typed_query&f=live
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/03/old_school_hacktivism_is_back/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/04/japan_nuclear_expertise/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/30/anonymous_second_epik_dump/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/04/generative_ai_japan_supermarket/
[9] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/iaea-finds-japans-plans-to-release-treated-water-into-the-sea-at-fukushima-consistent-with-international-safety-standards
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZNn7UjrihatoY9uoqYW-WgAAAsI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZNn7UjrihatoY9uoqYW-WgAAAsI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/202104_bp_breifing.pdf
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZNn7UjrihatoY9uoqYW-WgAAAsI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZNn7UjrihatoY9uoqYW-WgAAAsI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3230082/fukushima-discharge-row-hong-kong-experts-warn-over-radioactive-contamination-risk-japanese-seafood
[16] https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2023/08/113_354309.html
[17] https://twitter.com/MofaJapan_en/status/1683769364322058241
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
It is interesting how we're getting worked up about releasing tritium and carbon14 at really very low levels yet in the late 40's for 15c and a box top from Kix cereal you could get the Lone Ranger atomic bomb ring that had a chunk of polonium210 in it. How many kids broke them open to see what was inside?
Natural tritium
What's the betting these Anonymous goons have no idea that tritium exists naturally in water, everywhere, though at lower concentrations than the waste. Or they know and don't care, because they want an excuse to be vandals.
Diluting tritium in sea water at between 1250 and 3750 litres per litre of waste water will reduce the tritium concentration to natural background levels. That's not a huge dilution. If TEPCO were to spread the discharge over a wide area the concentration increases really would be negligible. But this is TEPCO we're talking about, so they'd probably cheap-out on it and hope the sea dilutes it for them.
Homeopathy, again
However safe the water seems to be, the EUTNAIOA quotes nuclear engineer Hiroaki Koide and points out that "diluting simply means spreading pollution over a large area" – putting sea life, and those who consume it, in danger.
OhNoes!. Usual problems apply. Big scarey numbers in 'millions of gallons' of contaminated water. Proposal involves pouring those gallons into the 710,000,000 km3 Pacific Ocean. 1km3=26,417,2052,358.15 US gallons. People on the US West coast, make sure you're well stocked up on iodine tablets, or other patent remedies sold by anti-nuclear shills.
Meanwhile, the 165m km3 Pacific is busily being bombarded with cosmic and solar rays, not to mention RADIOACTIVE SUBSTANCES in the sea bed, or belching out of volcanic fissures. Not that consuming carbon-14 puts anyone in any real danger anyway given the abundance of it already in the environment. What they're not telling you is the potential tipping point. Carbon-14 will decay into nitrogen, and we know from the Netherlands that nitrogen is almost as bad as CO2. Beta decay means emitting an electron and an electron anti neutrino, so can potentially lead to a large increase in antimatter, and the Pacific Ocean exploding. The results would be devasting given the mass of the ocean and antimatter having a yield of around 40kt/g
(insert missing /sarc tags to taste)
Re: Homeopathy, again
How else are they going to create Godzilla?
I think the use of the word 'waste' to describe this stuff gives people the impression it is like the glowing goo from the simpsons.
Hmm
I wonder if these 'activists' are leftovers who wanted the plant to go boom because nuclear is scary. So much hysteria was pumped up at the time and even the German gov bought into the insanity at the time. But now nuclear looks like a golden child for 'saving the earth', maybe these guys never got the updated memo?
Re: Hmm
One of the reasons for the delay of the new US nuclear power station was that an environmental group sued them for not doing a study to evaluate the impact of tsunami on the power plant. Its 50 miles inland and in an area not known for tsunamis.
> Doing so exposes the water to 64 radioactive elements whose half-life range from negligible to 5,000 years, as is the case with carbon-14.
I feel like negligible is the wrong word here. It's the elements with the negligible half-lives that are the dangerous ones which will kill you.