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For Immediate Release
April, 13 2021, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Email:,pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org
The Japanese Government's Decision to Discharge Fukushima Contaminated Water Ignores Human Rights and International Maritime Law
Greenpeace Japan strongly condemns the decision of the of Prime Minister Suga's cabinet to dispose of over 1.23 million tons of radioactive waste water stored in tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean.[1] This completely disregards the human rights and interests of the people in Fukushima, wider Japan and the Asia-Pacific region.
The decision means that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) can begin radioactive waste discharges from its nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean. It has been said it would take 2 years to prepare for the discharge.
TOKYO, Japan
Greenpeace Japan strongly condemns the decision of the of Prime Minister Suga's cabinet to dispose of over 1.23 million tons of radioactive waste water stored in tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean.[1] This completely disregards the human rights and interests of the people in Fukushima, wider Japan and the Asia-Pacific region.
The decision means that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) can begin radioactive waste discharges from its nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean. It has been said it would take 2 years to prepare for the discharge.
Kazue Suzuki, Climate/Energy Campaigner at Greenpeace Japan, said:
"The Japanese government has once again failed the people of Fukushima. The government has taken the wholly unjustified decision to deliberately contaminate the Pacific Ocean with radioactive wastes. It has discounted the radiation risks and turned its back on the clear evidence that sufficient storage capacity is available on the nuclear site as well as in surrounding districts.[2] Rather than using the best available technology to minimize radiation hazards by storing and processing the water over the long term, they have opted for the cheapest option [3], dumping the water into the Pacific Ocean.
The Cabinet's decision failed to protect the environment and neglected the large-scale opposition and concerns of the local Fukushima residents, as well as the neighboring citizens around Japan. Greenpeace stands with the people of Fukushima, including fishing communities, in their efforts to stop these plans," said Suzuki.
Greenpeace Japan's polling has shown that the majority of residents in Fukushima and the wider Japan are opposed to discharging this radioactive waste water into the Pacific. Additionally, the nationwide federation of Japan Fisheries Cooperatives has continued to express its complete opposition to ocean discharges.
United Nations' human rights special rapporteurs warned the Japanese government in June 2020 and again in March 2021 that discharging the water into the environment breaches the rights of Japanese citizens and its neighbors including Korea. They called on the Japanese government to delay any decision on discharging the contaminated water into the sea until the crisis of COVID-19 is over and appropriate international consultations are held[4].
Though the decision has been announced, it will take around two years before these discharges commence at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director at Greenpeace International, said:
"In the 21st century, when the planet and in particular the world's oceans are facing so many challenges and threats, it is an outrage that the Japanese government and TEPCO think they can justify the deliberate dumping of nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean. The decision is a violation of Japan's legal obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea[5], (UNCLOS), and will be strongly resisted over the coming months."
Since 2012, Greenpeace has proactively campaigned against plans to discharge Fukushima contaminated water - submitting technical analysis to UN agencies, holding seminars with local residents of Fukushima with other NGOs, and petitioning against the discharges and submitted to relevant Japanese government bodies.
Furthermore, a recent Greenpeace Japan report detailed alternatives to the current flawed decommissioning plans for Fukushima Daiichi, including options to stop the continued increase of contaminated water.[6] Greenpeace will continue to lead the campaign to stop radioactive waste water from being discharged into the Pacific.
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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Trump's Indiana Redistricting Scheme Crashes and Burns in Overwhelming Defeat
The vote came after an emotional debate in which some Republican lawmakers detailed threats and harassment they'd received for opposing the president's redistricting scheme.
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President Donald Trump's push to get Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections went down in overwhelming defeat in the Indiana state Senate on Thursday.
As reported by Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman, the proposal to support a mid-decade gerrymander in Indiana was rejected by a vote of 19 in favor to 31 opposed, with 21 Republican state senators crossing the aisle to vote with all 10 Democrats to torpedo the measure, which would have changed the projected balance of Indiana's current congressional makeup from seven Republicans and two Democrats to a 9-0 map in favor of the GOP.
The Senate vote came after the state House's approval of the bill and an emotional debate in which some Indiana Republicans opposed to the president's plan detailed violent threats they'd received from his supporters.
According to a report published in the Atlantic on Thursday, Republican Indiana state Sen. Greg Walker (41) this week detailed having heavily armed police come to his home as the result of a false emergency call, a practice commonly known as swatting.
Walker said that he refused to be intimated by such tactics, and added that "I fear for all states if we allow threats and intimidation to become the norm."
Indiana's rejection of the effort is a major blow to Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting crusade, which began in Texas and subsequently spread to Missouri and North Carolina.
Christina Harvey, executive director for Stand Up America, said that the Indiana state Senate's rejection of the Trump plan was an "important victory for democracy."
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John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, praised the Republicans who rejected the president's scheme despite enduring threats and harassment.
"Threats of violence are never acceptable, and no lawmakers should face violent threats for simply standing up for their constituents," Bisognano said. "Republicans in other states who are facing a similar choice—whether to listen to their constituents or follow orders from Washington—should follow Indiana’s lead in rejecting this charade and finally put an end to the national gerrymandering crisis."
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"We write with concerns regarding recent reports that the Social Security Administration is reorganizing its field office operations, and has established a goal of cutting the number of field office visits in half—amounting to 15 million fewer visits annually," Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a letter to SSA Administrator Frank Bisignano.
"Given that beneficiaries are already waiting months for field office appointments, and the agency has not shared with Congress or the public on how it plans to achieve this goal, we are concerned that these efforts are in fact part of a plan to 'quietly kill field offices,' implementing a backdoor cut in benefits by making it harder for Americans to access the Social Security customer services they need," the senators said.
"The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security."
Earlier this month, Nextgov/FCW revealed that the Social Security Administration said in internal documents that it wants “no more than 15 million total” in-person visits to its field offices in fiscal year 2026—or about half the current number of such visits. An anonymous SSA staffer told the outlet that senior agency officials are aiming for “fewer people in the front door" and for "all work that doesn’t require direct customer interactions to be centralized.”
As Warren's office noted Thursday:
The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security. Under Commissioner Bisignano, the administration has implemented policy changes that make it harder for Americans to get their benefits, including by implementing burdensome in-person and bug-prone identification processes that force millions more beneficiaries to visit field offices each year—at the same time they are slashing SSA’s workforce by around 7,000 and closing regional offices.
Instead of staffing up to meet these needs, SSA’s field office capacity has significantly declined. Beneficiaries are being forced to wait hours to get help—only to be told they will need to call to schedule an appointment.
"We are concerned that your plan is to force beneficiaries onto SSA’s bug-prone website or push them into customer service phone tree 'doom-loops'—which will almost certainly result in delayed or missed benefits for some individuals," the letter adds. "Once again, you seem to have adopted a slash-first, think-later approach to 'modernizing' SSA, and beneficiaries will pay the price."
The senators are asking Bisignano if the reports of proposed SSA office visit reductions are accurate, and if so, how and when the plan will be implemented, how the agency will "provide services to beneficiaries that would otherwise go to field offices," and how the reductions will affect already lengthy wait times and service online users and callers to the agency's 1-800 number.
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The report, published Thursday, notes that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), signed into law by Trump in 2020, has completely failed to fulfill Trump's stated goal of lowering the US trade deficit with Canada and Mexico, which has grown from a combined $125 billion in 2020 to $263 billion in 2025.
This increased trade deficit was particularly notable when it comes to the auto industry, says the report, written by EPI senior economist Adam S. Hersh.
"In the critical automotive industry that Trump said he wanted to reshore, imports of motor vehicles and parts from Mexico nearly doubled following USMCA, rising to $274 billion in 2024, up from $196 billion in 2019," the report explains. "Light-duty vehicles imports from Mexico rose 36% while imports of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles increased a whopping 256%."
The report also finds that the trade deal "left a gaping loophole for Chinese manufacturers to exploit duty-free access to North American markets without reciprocal market access for US manufacturers," the result of which was "Chinese firms expanded their direct investment footprint in Mexico by as much as 288% through 2023."
The bottom line, says the report, is "Trump’s USMCA created more problems than it fixed," and that "today the pressure on manufacturing jobs and deterioration in the trade balance with Mexico are worse than before USMCA."
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Among other things, the report recommends closing the loopholes that have allowed Chinese manufacturers to rapidly expand their footprint in Mexico; expanding the the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism that "has helped improve wages and working conditions in a number of specific workplaces"; and slashing intellectual property rights provisions that "currently allow companies to preempt local laws addressing negative externalities from digital service provision."
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