By Gwen Robinson, Lindsay Whipp and Amy Kazmin – Financial Times
News that engineers had plugged a leak of radioactive water into the sea from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant has been welcomed in Japan, amid growing concern about food safety and protests by fishing groups against the damage done to fishing grounds. Official confirmation on Tuesday that small fish called sand lance, caught off the coast of Ibaraki, south of the nuclear plant, were contaminated with higher than acceptable levels of radioactive iodine and caesium has dealt a further blow to Japan’s fishing industry.
Tests on 1kg of the fish revealed they contained 526 becquerels of caesium, exceeding Japan’s legal limit of 500, according to Japan’s ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries. On top of seafood imports, worth about $17bn in 2005, total seafood sales accounted for about $105bn in 2005, according to Thomson Business Intelligence, which projected sales of $142bn for 2010. Leaders of local and national fishing co-operatives criticised Tokyo Electric Power’s release of radio?active water into the sea, which the company defended as the only choice to allow it to free capacity to store water with higher levels of radiation.
