China has announced that it would gradually resume importing seafood from Japan after placing a blanket ban last year due to the leak of water from the decommissioned Fukushima nuclear plant.
In August 2023, Japan began dumping treated water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean in an operation that it claims is safe, a view supported by the UN atomic agency.
China, on the other hand, slammed the publication as “selfish” and barred all Japanese seafood imports from the country.
Beijing and Tokyo announced on Friday that they had reached an agreement on the wastewater release that would permit China to gradually reintroduce them.
“China will begin to adjust the relevant measures based on scientific evidence and gradually resume imports of Japanese aquatic products that meet the regulation requirements and standards,” Beijing’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
According to the ministry, “multiple rounds of consultations” on the Fukushima release were recently held by officials from both sides.
It stated that Japan was dedicated to “fulfilling its obligations under international law, doing its utmost to avoid leaving (a) negative impact on human health and the environment, and conducting continuous evaluations of the impact on the marine environment and marine ecosystems” .
In 2011, three reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi facility in northeastern Japan went into meltdown following a massive earthquake and tsunami that killed around 18,000 people.
Since then, plant operator TEPCO collected water contaminated as it cooled the wrecked reactors, along with groundwater and rain that has seeped in.
After China banned Japanese seafood imports in October over the wastewater release, Russia did the same, as a “precautionary measure”.
