Japanese official drinks decontaminated water to proove it's safe to dump in sea!

"After insisting for weeks that water collected from reactor buildings at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant posed no threat to human health once it was decontaminated, a Japanese government official poured himself a glass of the liquid and drank it on live television on Monday.

The water gulped down by the official, Yasuhiro Sonoda, came from the flooded basements of two reactor buildings at the plant, which was severely damaged when a tsunami struck the Japanese coast in March.

As the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported, the safety of the water drained from the reactor buildings is an issue because the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, wants to pump it out to sea, despite objections from local governments and fishing cooperatives in the area."

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/japanese-official-drinks-wat...

"Accepting a dare from a freelance writer, a government official drank purified water that had been contaminated with low levels of radiation at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

After drinking about half a cup on Oct. 31, Yasuhiro Sonoda, a parliamentary secretary at the Cabinet Office, said: "Just because I drank the water does not mean that its safety has been confirmed, so there is no significance to the act. I drank it because a request had been made."

The freelance writer had asked that the water be drunk to prove the radiation level was low.

Sonoda drank the water at a joint news conference held by government officials and Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima plant. Such joint news conferences are held twice a week.

The water that Sonoda drank had accumulated in the buildings of the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors after the tsunami hit the facility on March 11. The water was purified and desalinated.

The radiation of the water was at a level that would normally mean it would be released into the ocean following confirmation that it was within government standards."

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ2011110116238