Unbeknownst to most people, Japan recently released its 12th batch of radioactive nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

This latest batch of discharge weighed approximately 7,800 tons, or around 15.6 million pounds.

Including this latest batch, it means that Japan has dumped an estimated 86,000 tons of nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean thus far. This sounds like a lot, but it’s actually only the beginning. Its plan is to continue doing this for the next 30 years, and in the process, dump roughly 1.3 million tons of nuclear wastewater.

The reason for this stems from what happened 14 years ago, during the Fukushima nuclear disaster. That was when an earthquake and subsequent tsunami caused a near meltdown of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.

The disaster led to the contamination of a million tons of water.

For the past 14 years, Japan has kept this water inside the plant, where it has been slowly treating it. But it ran out of space. Therefore, the Japanese government began to slowly release this treated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.

Let's go through the full story, as well as what the latest research has found, in terms of the effects that this wastewater is having on the local marine life.