An animated graphic has been viewed millions of times in Chinese state news reports and social media posts falsely claiming it shows the spread of wastewater across the Pacific after its release from Japan's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in August 2023. The model was in fact taken from an old journal article and simulates the spread of a radioactive isotope in the first 54 days after the plant's meltdown in 2011 following an earthquake and tsunami. One of the study's authors and an environmental scientist said the graphic could not be applied to the current wastewater release.

The graphic, which shows a highlighted current spreading out from Japan across a map of the Pacific, was shared by China's state broadcaster CCTV on Douyin on August 24, 2023.

"According to a study by a relevant institution, radioactive material from Japan's nuclear wastewater could spread to most of the Pacific Ocean in 57 days, and to global seawaters in 10 years' time," reads the caption written in simplified Chinese.

The video's narration claims the study is by a marine research institute in Germany, which found the strong currents off Fukushima would push wastewater from the nuclear plant to the United States and Canada within three years and spread globally in 10 years.

The post was shared on the same day Japan began releasing more than 500 Olympic swimming pools' worth of treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific, 12 years after one of the world's...

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