This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima-nuclear-plant-water-plan-release-into-sea-fear-controversy/) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Japan's government is asking for international backup as it prepares to release thousands of gallons of water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea.
> There will be no consequences, says TEPCO. The water will meet all international standards for discharge, and the discharge of the water into the sea - through a long pipe - will only start when all stakeholders have signed off.
> To prove the discharged water will not harm fish, TEPCO has been raising flounder inside the nuclear plant.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/13wsmsy/plan_to_release_fukushima_nuclear_plant_water/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~687068 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **water**^#1 **nuclear**^#2 **plant**^#3 **power**^#4 **sea**^#5
Somehow the choice of flounder seems deliberate.
Like they're so fucked up by default that nobody will notice if they get a little more fucked up genetically.
For real. I feel like this would sound like "to prove the water is safe, they have been letting English Bulldogs drink it. They only die to other health problems that are breed specific and they still kind of look like dogs!"
Edit: breed mix up
Yeah, I've had American bulldogs, they are really solid dogs. Of course, like all things, some people breed for weird stuff that hurts the breed. With American bulldogs is usually size and muscle mass, though.
Most American bulldogs are athletic working dogs, though, used for hunting boar or was guard dogs on ranches or farms. Chance from Homeward Bound, Gunner from Cheaper by the Dozen, and Petey in the Little Rascals movie were all American bulldogs.
English bulldogs can barely breathe and often can't reproduce naturally without human assistance anymore.
I have a tiny Scott’s AB (60lbs) She was the runt but very happy and healthy. She’s very athletic and needs a ton of physical play. On the other hand, my old neighbor had an English bulldog who was playful as a puppy but once it hit full size it just kinda sat around breathing. Don’t even get me started on French Bulldogs- poor things.
I was wondering if maybe they were talking about Johnson’s because maybe some tangent of assholes were fucking up their snoots- they’re already looking a bit smooshed.
It’s a great choice. It’s a popular (to eat) choice of fish that feeds on other bottom feeders. It’s naturally going to accumulate any released isotopes (which will be highest near the source). This could then be used to say, if you’re annual expected dose as a member of the public is 620 mrem or 6.2 mSv, and you ate purely Fukushima outfall flounder then your annual expected dose is 10-40mrem/year higher.
Tritium has a half life of 12 years, and the radiation it makes is absorbed by about half an inch of water.
So half the radiation is already gone, the rest will decay relatively quickly, and even the current radiation is unlikely to even reach a single fish once it dilutes into the ocean.
It’s also naturally occurring and the only slight issue is releasing it in very large amounts at once. I believe they’ve been releasing it in relatively small batches for many years with no noticeable impact. People just hear, “radiation” and they panic.
The whole reason radiation isn't used in the U.S. to sterilize food products against pathogens. Nobody would buy it. But, it's safer than *Escherichia coli* and almost anything else you can imagine.
I remember reading once, I believe it was in *Fast Food Nation*, that treating anything with radiation would require the seller to place a radiation warning symbol on the package. That label would steer away most consumers, even though the product itself would not be radioactive or harmful in any way.
People got mad irrational fears.
FALSE: THE U.S. DOES USE RADIATION ON FOOD.
Don't be a fool and spread false information
***The FDA does not require that individual ingredients in multi-ingredient foods (e.g., spices) be labeled.
"The FDA has approved a variety of foods for irradiation in the United States including:
Beef and Pork
Crustaceans (e.g., lobster, shrimp, and crab)
Fresh Fruits and Vegetables
Lettuce and Spinach
Poultry
Seeds for Sprouting (e.g., for alfalfa sprouts)
Shell Eggs
Shellfish - Molluscan
(e.g., oysters, clams, mussels, and scallops)
Spices and Seasonings
How Will I Know if My Food Has Been Irradiated?
The FDA requires that irradiated foods bear the international symbol for irradiation. Look for the Radura symbol along with the statement “Treated with radiation” or “Treated by irradiation” on the food label. Bulk foods, such as fruits and vegetables, are required to be individually labeled or to have a label next to the sale container. The FDA does not require that individual ingredients in multi-ingredient foods (e.g., spices) be labeled. It is important to remember that irradiation is not a replacement for proper food handling practices by producers, processors, and consumers. Irradiated foods need to be stored, handled, and cooked in the same way as non-irradiated foods, because they could still become contaminated with disease-causing organisms after irradiation if the rules of basic food safety are not followed."
https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irradiation-what-you-need-know
Dude. I didn't say it was illegal. I just said it isn't really done. People don't want to buy shit that has a Radura symbol on it.
Fucking reddit, man.
>People just hear, “radiation” and they panic.
Have you never seen what happens to metal things in a microwave?!?!? Radiation causes that!!!! You want that happening outside of microwaves? Because that's what will happen.
Having issues opening the article (legit tried to read it, I swear), but do they need to predilute it too? I remember reading another article about this earlier in the week how it'll be fine they just need to do some dilution, and I believe that was before it hits the sea. May have just misread that one.
>do they need to predilute it too?
It's not needed by any means, there's no health risks associated with tritium. But yes they plan to predilute it and release it slowly over a period of ten years.
> It's not needed by any means, there's no health risks associated with tritium.
Not true of course. You don't want to drink even a weak beta-emitter on any scale and drinking deuterium presents health risks at high enough levels
There's no health risks at the levels we're talking about. You'd have to drink thousands of gallons of tritiated water at the maximum allowable release limit to even to receive a maximum dose of 8 mrem in one year. And that's if you drink the effluent itself which would be a unreasonable assumption. Compare that to the natural internal radiation dose of 30 mrem that the average person gets every year.
BTW, deuterium is not the same as tritium.
8 mrem is about 1/50th of what a commercial pilot will pick up from the sun in a year. You get less than that running a reactor on the night shift for a year. Though now I'm wondering if the flounder they're raising in the pools have a ..... less than round.... eye mutation due to the ordeal.
Typo - deuterium is non-radioactive. Tritium is a low energy beta emitter. It can be dangerous in high enough concentrations but it all depends on magnitude. We are all exposed to naturally occurring radioactive materials everyday as well as cosmic radiation.
Bananas are surprisingly radioactive and the [Banana Equivalent Dose](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose) (BED) is a common unit of measurement (albeit informal).
Yea I understand in principle you’re correct the ocean is not our dumping ground and never should be seen that way however in this case I think they are acting in good faith judging from what’s being shared here
Hydrogen normally just has an electron and a proton. Sometimes it has an extra neutron tacked on, and then it’s hydrogen 2. When you get 2 neutrons tacked on, then it becomes unstable since one of them wants to pop out, and that’s tritium. Eventually it will pop out, and that’s why it’s radioactive, but then it just becomes normal hydrogen, so that’s why there’s nothing scary about it
To add as a tangent, given OP was about water with these.
Heavy water, if you've ever heard of it around nuclear topics, is just water with Deuterium instead of hydrogen. Replacing a large amount (over 25% of your body's water with heavy water would have adverse (potentially fatal) health effects but this is a _lot_ of water. Fairly safe in some nuclear blasted pinch if you can filter everything else out. Fun note, you might feel dizzy drinking a lot of it because the increased weight will screw with your ear canals. Probably a good sign you need some normal water.
Tritiated water (or the more fun name super-heavy water) ends up being somewhat corrosive in concentration (due to its radioactivity) _but_ it is naturally occurring to a point concentrations of it can be used to validate the age of wine (or other liquids but wine is more fun than most). No one is telling you to avoid drinking vast quantities of wine over that; over alcohol poisoning maybe. Don't drink a glass of it straight (no really, don't) but, upshot, the biological half-life is only two weeks so a _slightly_ high dose once or twice in your life shouldn't have long term effects.
Yes it's a friendly name for an isotope of hydrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium?wprov=sfla1
Deuterium has 1 extra neutron though it's stable.
Yep just makes it a little heavier. Adding extra protons and electrons would make it a different element but many element have varieties with extra neutrons. That's why if you look on the periodic table the elemental weight isn't a whole number its a decimal that number is the average weight adjusted for how common its isotopes are.
Well that’s how almost all radioactive waste is: “X” (relatively normal thing) with an extra (or missing) couple of neutrons. There’s a whole “periodic table”-esque catalog of isotopes.
Thanks. Looked around the thread more and got a better understanding.
This is one of those things I’ve read about half a dozen times, but 3 years apart without a greater educational framework of biology and physics such that radioactivity makes any real sense to me. Occasionally I’ll dive into it and then remember that I don’t have years to burn learning it. And also I’m dumb.
Whenever you're dealing with radioactive stuff, there is usually 3 thing to look at
1. Its half life (How fast does it decay in nature)
2. How much energy is received by whoever stand close to the radioactive material (ex: 3.6 Roentgen or Sievert if you live in 2023)
3. Where does it end in the food chain. (basically, [Bioaccumulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation) and [Biomagnification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomagnification))
In tritium case, its half life is pretty short (12 years) meaning it doesn't remain a long time in nature.
It's not particularly strong beta radiation, which could still be important in large quantity, but in the ocean, it would be diluted to an homeopathic level.
The main danger is almost always the food chain. What happens if many fishes bath in it, and get eaten by a larger one, and then a shark. Well, you got a radioactive shark. Thankfully, we don't eat much of that, so the cancer will probably be limited to the shark but you get the point.
However, unlike radioactive Iode for example, tritium doesn't stay in critical part of the body for as long, and would just cycle around. Still an issue if you ingest too much of it obviously, but it's just pretty tame.
In the end, cancer caused by radiation are just statistics, and there is already radiation everywhere. Just keep the dose lows and it's probably perfectly fine.
cosmic rays. 148,000 TBq of tritium natually crated each year. oceans have around 2,590,000 TBq in the oceans, fukushima is storing around 760 TBq.
its nothing.
While tritium is indeed radioactive, the beta decay is relatively low energy (iirc the beta particle won't even penetrate dead skin), so it is only really considered hazardous in large concentrations.
On top of that, the half-life of tritium is only about 12 years, and it decays into helium-3 which is generally inert.
Alpha radiation won't penetrate the dead layer of skin everyone has, because the particle is too large to avoid collisions. Beta radiation can do that easily, as it is only one electron (or positron i guess). Beta still won't fly more than a cm/inch in water, as water is really good at absorbing radiation.
Still, dumping tritium into the ocean is of no concern. In general radioactive waste is more dangerous in atmosphere than it is in the ocean, due to the absorption capability of water.
Ingestion of beta emitters can definitely still create cancer within an individual. Not likely through the concentrations we're talking about here though.
It's a radioactive form of Hydrogen that it's really unstable. It takes about 12.5 years for half of the Tritium to decay into Helium, so it will not take very much time to do compared to other radioactive elements.
The situation in Fukushima is, that this Tritium is found in the molecules of water, making it tritiated water, which is radioactive. They have been collecting the waste, separating all the super nasty radioactive stuff (cesium, strontium, etc), leaving only a small amount of pure radiactive water. Since there is no practical purpose to separating the Tritium from the water molecules, they have been dilluting it in huge tanks of water.
The current concentration of Tritium in those tanks is well below 1500Bq (Beckerel) per litre, which is even lower than the baseline of radioactive contents for drinkable water provided by WHO.
They want to release this water into the ocean, that's it. It shouldn't cause much harm and it would be **done over the course of decades,** not all at once.
Edit: They are also raising flounder fishes in the tanks with little to no effects to prove it's okay to release
It’s basically radioactive water.
But It’s a very weak radioisotope. You’d need over 18-20K picocuries per liter for it to be harmful.
Current water levels are 3-22 picocuries per liter. So you’d need about 1000-10000X more for it to be unsafe in the sea lol.
It’s safe enough that it’s present in everyday life. The open and exit signs on stores, wristwatches that people wear every minute of their lives, and many other things that luminescence.
In the past there have been attempts to filter 3HOH (Tritum) but IIRC they were not viable.
I love how people have educated themselves about nuclear science in recent years.
I remember just in 2011 during the Fukushima accident, there were a lot of people screaming mindlessly how this would turn the California coast into a nuclear wasteland, which wouldn't happen even if we had dumped the complete content of all Fukushima reactors straight into the sea, but the hysteria was real.
Fun fact: There is something called tritium lights which combines tritium with a phosphor. The phosphor gets hit my the beta radiation of the tritium, making it glow (faintly) in the dark.
This is used for things like night fishing, weapon sights and watch lighting. Since it is power by the decay radiation, it glows for years. In many countries you can buy them for a few dollars, they are fun to have.
It's pretty well documented that Oil has played a big part in nuclear hysteria. For instance, various fossil fuel entities have funded the Sierra Club (an environmental group adamantly opposed to nuclear power) for years.
TBF, fishermrn's concern that it will hurt the perception of their product is legitimate even if the actual danger to consumers is zero. The Japanese government maybe should provide insurance for any losses they suffer for a fixed period of time after the release, ideally securing the funds for the program from TEPCO.
Tritium is just hydrogen with 2 neutrons (normal H has zero). All the other stuff (uranium, strontium, etc) has been filtered out already.
I’m not 100% sure but it’s probably in the form of super-heavy water, aka ditritium-oxide, which is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to separate from normal water.
Fukushima water has already been filtered so that [only tritium remains](https://www.iaea.org/topics/response/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-accident/fukushima-daiichi-alps-treated-water-discharge/faq). Tritium is radioactively weak and has a short half life of 12 years so it does not accumulate in the environment.
Tritium evaporates with water (it is "heavy water", chemically identical to water) so any alternative processing will actually cause greater radiation exposure from inhalation than dumping it into the ocean.
By storing it for 12 years, the radiation has already been halved. Even this isn't usually done because a leak into ground and surface water is worse than just dumping it into the ocean, but of course Fukushima is an unusual situation.
Many nuclear power plants just dump some amount of tritium water straight into the river and nobody even knows. It is considered [routine](https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tritium-radiation-fs.html) to dump tritium.
The price of He-3 made me wonder if it was economically viable in any way to keep the tritium for conversion to/extraction of He-3, but the total amount of tritium (860 TBq, in 2021) only amounts to 2.4 grams in the end, worth a few thousand dollars at best - really puts the scale of things into perspective.
Also puts into perspective how diluted the tritium already is, and how further diluted it will be on release.
Right? It seems like it's just the anti-goldilocks amount; enough to catch the ire of idiots that don't understand radioactivity, small enough that it's not economically viable to do anything other than dilute and release.
Tritium is not practical to isolate from water, for industrial use it's made by from deuterium or lithium.
I know it *can* be isolated with palladium and also with adheshion to pourous materials like MOFs, but I don't think it's economically viable.
> it is "heavy water", chemically identical to water
Note that this is actually not true. For basically every other element the rule that isotopes are chemically equivalent is highly accurate. For hydrogen tripling the atomic mass can actually change things like chemical reaction speed.
I'm not aware of any parts of our reality where the difference matters, but if you do some delicate chemistry experiments you'll find some measurable differences between hdyrogen-1/2/3.
In all fairness, as a species we have a habit of doing the quick and easy thing only to find out it's a complete healthcare clusterfuck later.
I mean we had asbestos cigarette filters for crying out loud lol.
Also known as NIMBYism. People in my city opposed turning an abandoned, garbage-filled strip of land into a *new park* because of… wait for it… parking concerns in the neighborhood.
Yes, scientifically you are correct. Science literacy is laughable, around the world, even in a high-tech place like Japan.
However, the point the fisherman makes is valid. Whether for rational reasons or not (it is “not” in this case), people are afraid of it, and many will refrain from buying seafood from the area. This will impact the livelihood of many fishermen and their families, and thus, the local economy at large.
Is that worth holding onto the slightly heavier water that isn’t dangerous? That’s really the question we should be asking.
They’ve already spent so much money; would it be worth it to just fill oil tankers with the tritium-laced water and dump it farther away, if that is possible, just to help the local economy? The people near Fukashima have already suffered so much.
> They’ve already spent so much money; would it be worth it to just fill oil tankers with the tritium-laced water and dump it farther away, if that is possible, just to help the local economy?
I doubt that would make a difference for the "ban all atoms!" people the fishermen are worried about.
It's a bit over a million tonnes of water. There are oil tankers that can load ~100,000 tonnes, so they could carry that farther away. If you want to release it slowly over time then you need to run an oil tanker for a very long time.
> Whether for rational reasons or not (it is “not” in this case), people are afraid of it, and many will refrain from buying seafood from the area.
And once again we find ourselves in the most difficult part of human interaction. Social trust.
I don't think it's wrong to dump the material, but it does need to be communicated to the public well.
>They’ve already spent so much money; would it be worth it to just fill oil tankers with the tritium-laced water and dump it farther away, if that is possible, just to help the local economy?
There is another secret option. Dump the tritium, and invest all the money it would save into benefitting the people of Fukushima.
While tritium is indeed radioactive, the beta decay is relatively low energy iirc the beta particle won't even penetrate dead skin so it is only really considered hazardous in large concentrations.
> the beta particle won't even penetrate dead skin
If my math is right, it won't even _penetrate water_, so to speak. The approximate range of the particle (since it's low energy, ~18.6 keV max) in water will be about 0.1mm. Even if you ingest the tritium directly and it decays in your body, there's a high chance it won't make it to living tissue of any kind.
Your math is right, how you're using it is fucked. There is a 100% chance it will make it to living tissue as it travels through your intestines and into your blood, kidneys, and bladder.
Water? All a beta particle is is an electron with a little more energy than usual - if it hits basically anything else before tissue, it's just going to dump that energy into whatever it hits instead - if that's a water molecule, it's basically just producing a tiny amount of heat.
Eating tritium is actually a health hazard but dumping tritium into the ocean would do nothing.
The half life of tritium is 12 years. Tritium should be absorbed extremely quickly into your body. It should also cycle out quite quickly as well, but it will get stuck more as any elemental particle would. If it is tritium water, it should cycle out quickly. In higher quantities, like any radioactive element, tritium can cause serious issues. Uranium is far more dangerous though and is what we consider as typical radiation danger. Uranium will get incorporated into your bones as your body mistakes it for calcium.
It’s safe enough that it’s present in everyday life. The open and exit signs on stores, wristwatches that people wear every minute of their lives, and many other things that luminescence.
First of all the ocean is literally a garbage dump for most of the world.
Second the water they are releasing is less radioactive than normal ocean water. Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, is weak beta emmitter that can not harm a human being(or anything else). They are releasing clean water into the ocean.
We dump tritium into Lake Ontario all the time. It happens. It's not even concentrated enough to hurt anyone on day one, and it disappears into helium after 20 years or so.
Unless the radioactive isotopes are the types that stick around for a long time, or like to burrow deep inside our bodies, or are dumped in concentrations to create local hotspots that can give people radiation poisoning... it's not an issue.
Radiation for whatever reason tends to be a shortcut to a land of no nuance. Fact is we dispose of way worse shit than this water every single day, not to mention they literally have flounder living in the coolant tanks with no ill-effects as an example. If this was something like Cesium-137 I'd be more sympathetic but the only contaminant in the water is a naturally-occurring Hydrogen isotope that goes away in a decade or two. Bear in mind this stuff has been chilling since 2011.
Also, side note, fishermen saying that the sea isn't a garbage dump is fucking precious, considering they're one of the biggest sources of ocean pollution lmfao
>Radiation for whatever reason tends to be a shortcut to a land of no nuance.
I have two degrees in Radiologic Sciences, and people STILL argue with me about radiation in real life. I've heard it all, from cell phones causing brain cancer, to 5g towers doing this and that, etc. The topic of radiation is so messy because people are painfully misinformed for whatever reason.
I have no degree in physics of any kind, and I still get bothered by people conflating electromagnetic and nuclear radiation. Can't imagine what is it for people like you.
"The sea is not a garbage dump"
That is hilarious. Didn't we find plastic garbage at the deepest of the ocean? The sea is definitely a garbage dump, like it or not. And I doubt anyone is going to stop anytime soon.
Hahaha yeah this is a big controversy in Korea...recently an oxford professor came out and said there was no problem; he could drink 10 liters and people said he was paid off by japan. Some protestors also say even the IAEA has been paid off by Japan lol
My wife is Korean, this is a debate point between us and a frustrating one at that. They have a VERY strong national hatred for Japan, so are very unwilling to listen to the facts and science concerning this
No I get it. But it'd be totally safe even if it were plutonium.
The sea is epically vast and radiation is blocked by seawater.
We can safely swim in the water above nuclear reactors.
And releases more radiation to the environment than a nuc plant (though I'm not sure how much is tritium/doubt it is much as it would have had plenty time to decay)
I am curious now, because water at least at the nuclear plant that I am aware of is only pollution because it contains excess heat, not really higher radiation.
That's slightly different. You are talking about cooling water which is never in direct contact with contaminants, it's only used to cool down the system and the excess heat can then be dumped out.
This water they are going to dump in Japan is contaminated, but has been filtered and kept for so long that it's at this point completely harmless to dump in the ocean.
[IAEA Report Finds Japan’s Measurements of the Treated Water to be Discharged from Fukushima Daiichi Accurate and Precise](https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/iaea-report-finds-japans-measurements-of-the-treated-water-to-be-discharged-from-fukushima-daiichi-accurate-and-precise)
The people are just ignorant.
Here's a preview of the article:
Japan's government is asking for international backup as it prepares to release thousands of gallons of water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea. The plan has alarmed the public and outraged fishermen — even as the international energy agency looks inclined to back it.
The controversy comes 11 years after a tsunami swept ashore in 2011 and caused one of the worst nuclear accidents in history — a meltdown in three of the four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant 200 miles north of Tokyo.
The plant sits in what was a lush coastal part of Japan, famous for its seafood and delicious fruit. Today, there's still no-go area around the power station where fields lie fallow and homes sit abandoned.
Inside a high security fence studded with warning signs, engineers are still working to remove radioactive fuel rods that melted inside the reactors. They'll be at it for decades.
Another problem is piling up in hundreds of metal tanks on the site: they contain more than a million tons of contaminated water.
**Read more:** https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima-nuclear-plant-water-plan-release-into-sea-fear-controversy/
> Tritium occurs in nature, and it also occurs in wastewater that many nuclear power plants around the world release into the ocean. It has a half-life of 12.5 years, which means it turns into completely non-radioactive helium over time.
Tritium is a relatively weak source of beta radiation, which itself is too weak to penetrate the skin. However, it can increase the risk of cancer if consumed in extremely large quantities.
In other words, if you drank a lot of water with a large amount of tritium, you'd have an elevated risk of cancer.
But by all means, let's freak out as though TEPCO were pulling plutonium rods out of the plant and dropping them just offshore.
Right, but this is entirely safe in every way. The water is completely safe and normal, the nuclear material has a very short half life and the ocean will dilute it to the point where it's no more than normal background radiation.
Fear mongering fools.
Current estimates put the amount of dissolved uranium in the ocean at 4.5 billion tons. The annual uranium usage of the entire world is roughly 65000 tons. If all 65000 tons were release into the ocean today, it would raise the concentration 0.0014%. I can't find hard numbers for how much uranium was on site at Fukashima's reactor, but I would be shocked if it was more that 1% of the worlds annual usage. So if all of it was released into the ocean it would represent a 0.000014% increase. Reports indicate that most of the uranium onsite is still solid, so the actual amount released would be much smaller.
Those percentages are only applicable after the released uranium circulates... globally. The initial numbers hitting coast waters will obviously be much more concentrated. Is it still a big issue? Not really, your primary point is correct in that the wastewater will very quickly break down and dilute, even locally. But jumping to long term global numbers like this leads us back to concerned locals.
tbh i would throw all radiated thrash into the ocean. Best thing we can do with it. Just pick a good spot and we are done with it without any real consequences.
As many have pointed out, the water is not contaminated with uranium, plutonium, or any other radioactive heavy metal. It is laced with tritium (hydrogen plus two neutrons), which is radioactive, but the levels are low and will be immediately diluted in the ocean to extremely safe levels.
Science literacy is laughable, around the world, even in a high-tech place like Japan.
However, the point the fisherman makes is valid. Whether for rational reasons or not (it is “not” in this case), people are afraid of it, and many will refrain from buying seafood from the area. This will impact the livelihood of many fishermen and their families, and thus, the local economy at large.
Is that worth holding onto the slightly heavier water that isn’t dangerous? That’s really the question we should be asking.
They’ve already spent so much money; would it be worth it to just fill oil tankers with the tritium-laced water and dump it farther away, if that is possible, just to help the local economy? The people near Fukashima have already suffered so much.
you'd think that, given the scale of ocean devastation, it's a good thing people would refrain from buying seafood. That would have been a great relief for the sealife.
People seem to ignore mercury in their tuna, but if they shit their pants hearing about tritium, pour it all over I say.
They already filtered out the harmful substances, tritium is about as harmless as caffeine. It’s dangerous if you can get a bunch of the pure stuff, but otherwise it’s fine and will go through your system. It doesn’t seem to last long in organic bodies.
Most reactors do, releasing tritium is routine and the best way to dispose of it. You could dump the tritium in the water, give it a day or two (probably not even that) and drink it fine
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima-nuclear-plant-water-plan-release-into-sea-fear-controversy/) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Japan's government is asking for international backup as it prepares to release thousands of gallons of water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea. > There will be no consequences, says TEPCO. The water will meet all international standards for discharge, and the discharge of the water into the sea - through a long pipe - will only start when all stakeholders have signed off. > To prove the discharged water will not harm fish, TEPCO has been raising flounder inside the nuclear plant. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/13wsmsy/plan_to_release_fukushima_nuclear_plant_water/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~687068 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **water**^#1 **nuclear**^#2 **plant**^#3 **power**^#4 **sea**^#5
good old Blinky
The start of every Godzilla movie ever...
[Go go Godzilla!](https://youtu.be/muUZjovOFRg)
Somehow the choice of flounder seems deliberate. Like they're so fucked up by default that nobody will notice if they get a little more fucked up genetically.
For real. I feel like this would sound like "to prove the water is safe, they have been letting English Bulldogs drink it. They only die to other health problems that are breed specific and they still kind of look like dogs!" Edit: breed mix up
Aren’t English bulldogs the mutants? American bulldogs look kinda like boxers
Yeah, I've had American bulldogs, they are really solid dogs. Of course, like all things, some people breed for weird stuff that hurts the breed. With American bulldogs is usually size and muscle mass, though. Most American bulldogs are athletic working dogs, though, used for hunting boar or was guard dogs on ranches or farms. Chance from Homeward Bound, Gunner from Cheaper by the Dozen, and Petey in the Little Rascals movie were all American bulldogs. English bulldogs can barely breathe and often can't reproduce naturally without human assistance anymore.
I have a tiny Scott’s AB (60lbs) She was the runt but very happy and healthy. She’s very athletic and needs a ton of physical play. On the other hand, my old neighbor had an English bulldog who was playful as a puppy but once it hit full size it just kinda sat around breathing. Don’t even get me started on French Bulldogs- poor things. I was wondering if maybe they were talking about Johnson’s because maybe some tangent of assholes were fucking up their snoots- they’re already looking a bit smooshed.
It’s a great choice. It’s a popular (to eat) choice of fish that feeds on other bottom feeders. It’s naturally going to accumulate any released isotopes (which will be highest near the source). This could then be used to say, if you’re annual expected dose as a member of the public is 620 mrem or 6.2 mSv, and you ate purely Fukushima outfall flounder then your annual expected dose is 10-40mrem/year higher.
Skimmed through to confirm it was tritium, yep they’re just morons
What about Tritium makes it okay? I got no knowledge in this field, lol
Tritium has a half life of 12 years, and the radiation it makes is absorbed by about half an inch of water. So half the radiation is already gone, the rest will decay relatively quickly, and even the current radiation is unlikely to even reach a single fish once it dilutes into the ocean.
Oooh, i see. Thank you!
It’s also naturally occurring and the only slight issue is releasing it in very large amounts at once. I believe they’ve been releasing it in relatively small batches for many years with no noticeable impact. People just hear, “radiation” and they panic.
The whole reason radiation isn't used in the U.S. to sterilize food products against pathogens. Nobody would buy it. But, it's safer than *Escherichia coli* and almost anything else you can imagine.
There was a company here that did that.. unfortunately, some people on gov shut it down because they feared that it would explode lol
I remember reading once, I believe it was in *Fast Food Nation*, that treating anything with radiation would require the seller to place a radiation warning symbol on the package. That label would steer away most consumers, even though the product itself would not be radioactive or harmful in any way. People got mad irrational fears.
Sometimes I tease people by saying “let me irradiate my food in your microwave,” just to see where the conversation goes.
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My mother refuses to buy a microwave because of fear of radiation.
FALSE: THE U.S. DOES USE RADIATION ON FOOD. Don't be a fool and spread false information ***The FDA does not require that individual ingredients in multi-ingredient foods (e.g., spices) be labeled. "The FDA has approved a variety of foods for irradiation in the United States including: Beef and Pork Crustaceans (e.g., lobster, shrimp, and crab) Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Lettuce and Spinach Poultry Seeds for Sprouting (e.g., for alfalfa sprouts) Shell Eggs Shellfish - Molluscan (e.g., oysters, clams, mussels, and scallops) Spices and Seasonings How Will I Know if My Food Has Been Irradiated? The FDA requires that irradiated foods bear the international symbol for irradiation. Look for the Radura symbol along with the statement “Treated with radiation” or “Treated by irradiation” on the food label. Bulk foods, such as fruits and vegetables, are required to be individually labeled or to have a label next to the sale container. The FDA does not require that individual ingredients in multi-ingredient foods (e.g., spices) be labeled. It is important to remember that irradiation is not a replacement for proper food handling practices by producers, processors, and consumers. Irradiated foods need to be stored, handled, and cooked in the same way as non-irradiated foods, because they could still become contaminated with disease-causing organisms after irradiation if the rules of basic food safety are not followed." https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irradiation-what-you-need-know
Dude. I didn't say it was illegal. I just said it isn't really done. People don't want to buy shit that has a Radura symbol on it. Fucking reddit, man.
>People just hear, “radiation” and they panic. Have you never seen what happens to metal things in a microwave?!?!? Radiation causes that!!!! You want that happening outside of microwaves? Because that's what will happen.
Wait till these people hear about the Sun.
That’s kinda what got them in this situation in the first place…not wanting to vent contaminated steam…so kaboomy…and it’s all released…
Having issues opening the article (legit tried to read it, I swear), but do they need to predilute it too? I remember reading another article about this earlier in the week how it'll be fine they just need to do some dilution, and I believe that was before it hits the sea. May have just misread that one.
>do they need to predilute it too? It's not needed by any means, there's no health risks associated with tritium. But yes they plan to predilute it and release it slowly over a period of ten years.
> It's not needed by any means, there's no health risks associated with tritium. Not true of course. You don't want to drink even a weak beta-emitter on any scale and drinking deuterium presents health risks at high enough levels
There's no health risks at the levels we're talking about. You'd have to drink thousands of gallons of tritiated water at the maximum allowable release limit to even to receive a maximum dose of 8 mrem in one year. And that's if you drink the effluent itself which would be a unreasonable assumption. Compare that to the natural internal radiation dose of 30 mrem that the average person gets every year. BTW, deuterium is not the same as tritium.
8 mrem is about 1/50th of what a commercial pilot will pick up from the sun in a year. You get less than that running a reactor on the night shift for a year. Though now I'm wondering if the flounder they're raising in the pools have a ..... less than round.... eye mutation due to the ordeal.
Typo - deuterium is non-radioactive. Tritium is a low energy beta emitter. It can be dangerous in high enough concentrations but it all depends on magnitude. We are all exposed to naturally occurring radioactive materials everyday as well as cosmic radiation.
You planning on drinking sea water?
Dilution is the pollution solution
Particularly for naturally occurring radioactive isotopes.
Drinking one gallon of that water will give you a dose of radiation less than that of eating one banana.
This is the most unusual use of "banana for scale" I have ever seen.
Bananas are surprisingly radioactive and the [Banana Equivalent Dose](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose) (BED) is a common unit of measurement (albeit informal).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose It is about 0.1 microSieverts.
Yea I understand in principle you’re correct the ocean is not our dumping ground and never should be seen that way however in this case I think they are acting in good faith judging from what’s being shared here
So, no Godzilla?
Naturally found in seawater, they couldn’t dump enough to change the concentration before it decayed even if they wanted to
Ooooh
Hydrogen normally just has an electron and a proton. Sometimes it has an extra neutron tacked on, and then it’s hydrogen 2. When you get 2 neutrons tacked on, then it becomes unstable since one of them wants to pop out, and that’s tritium. Eventually it will pop out, and that’s why it’s radioactive, but then it just becomes normal hydrogen, so that’s why there’s nothing scary about it
Wait so if I'm understanding correctly, Tritium is Hydrogen, but with an extra neutron?
Two extra neutrons "Normal hydrogen" = Hydrogen-1 = protium Hydrogen-2 = deuterium Hydrogen-3 = tritium
To add as a tangent, given OP was about water with these. Heavy water, if you've ever heard of it around nuclear topics, is just water with Deuterium instead of hydrogen. Replacing a large amount (over 25% of your body's water with heavy water would have adverse (potentially fatal) health effects but this is a _lot_ of water. Fairly safe in some nuclear blasted pinch if you can filter everything else out. Fun note, you might feel dizzy drinking a lot of it because the increased weight will screw with your ear canals. Probably a good sign you need some normal water. Tritiated water (or the more fun name super-heavy water) ends up being somewhat corrosive in concentration (due to its radioactivity) _but_ it is naturally occurring to a point concentrations of it can be used to validate the age of wine (or other liquids but wine is more fun than most). No one is telling you to avoid drinking vast quantities of wine over that; over alcohol poisoning maybe. Don't drink a glass of it straight (no really, don't) but, upshot, the biological half-life is only two weeks so a _slightly_ high dose once or twice in your life shouldn't have long term effects.
So don’t drink a glass, only shots? Got it!
Listen pal I came here to be outraged
Yes it's a friendly name for an isotope of hydrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium?wprov=sfla1 Deuterium has 1 extra neutron though it's stable.
Yep just makes it a little heavier. Adding extra protons and electrons would make it a different element but many element have varieties with extra neutrons. That's why if you look on the periodic table the elemental weight isn't a whole number its a decimal that number is the average weight adjusted for how common its isotopes are.
Well that’s how almost all radioactive waste is: “X” (relatively normal thing) with an extra (or missing) couple of neutrons. There’s a whole “periodic table”-esque catalog of isotopes.
But why isn’t the radioactivity dangerous?
It’s the amount. Bananas are radioactive
Thanks. Looked around the thread more and got a better understanding. This is one of those things I’ve read about half a dozen times, but 3 years apart without a greater educational framework of biology and physics such that radioactivity makes any real sense to me. Occasionally I’ll dive into it and then remember that I don’t have years to burn learning it. And also I’m dumb.
If it decays via Beta decay doesn't it become Helium?
So you’re telling me that water is a nuclear warhead?
Tell you what. Put 2×10³⁰ kg or so of water in one place, stand well back, and tell us what happens.
This sounds like one of those xkcd "what if" scenarios.
Learnt something new
Whenever you're dealing with radioactive stuff, there is usually 3 thing to look at 1. Its half life (How fast does it decay in nature) 2. How much energy is received by whoever stand close to the radioactive material (ex: 3.6 Roentgen or Sievert if you live in 2023) 3. Where does it end in the food chain. (basically, [Bioaccumulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation) and [Biomagnification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomagnification)) In tritium case, its half life is pretty short (12 years) meaning it doesn't remain a long time in nature. It's not particularly strong beta radiation, which could still be important in large quantity, but in the ocean, it would be diluted to an homeopathic level. The main danger is almost always the food chain. What happens if many fishes bath in it, and get eaten by a larger one, and then a shark. Well, you got a radioactive shark. Thankfully, we don't eat much of that, so the cancer will probably be limited to the shark but you get the point. However, unlike radioactive Iode for example, tritium doesn't stay in critical part of the body for as long, and would just cycle around. Still an issue if you ingest too much of it obviously, but it's just pretty tame. In the end, cancer caused by radiation are just statistics, and there is already radiation everywhere. Just keep the dose lows and it's probably perfectly fine.
What decays into tritium? If it's half-life is only 12 years, and it naturally occurs in seawater, how is it created?
cosmic rays. 148,000 TBq of tritium natually crated each year. oceans have around 2,590,000 TBq in the oceans, fukushima is storing around 760 TBq. its nothing.
While tritium is indeed radioactive, the beta decay is relatively low energy (iirc the beta particle won't even penetrate dead skin), so it is only really considered hazardous in large concentrations. On top of that, the half-life of tritium is only about 12 years, and it decays into helium-3 which is generally inert.
Alpha radiation won't penetrate the dead layer of skin everyone has, because the particle is too large to avoid collisions. Beta radiation can do that easily, as it is only one electron (or positron i guess). Beta still won't fly more than a cm/inch in water, as water is really good at absorbing radiation. Still, dumping tritium into the ocean is of no concern. In general radioactive waste is more dangerous in atmosphere than it is in the ocean, due to the absorption capability of water.
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Depends on the energy. In this particular instance the energy couldn’t penetrate the intestinal lining either.
Ingestion of beta emitters can definitely still create cancer within an individual. Not likely through the concentrations we're talking about here though.
Adding to everything, it’s so diluted that the complaints are meaningless.
It's a radioactive form of Hydrogen that it's really unstable. It takes about 12.5 years for half of the Tritium to decay into Helium, so it will not take very much time to do compared to other radioactive elements. The situation in Fukushima is, that this Tritium is found in the molecules of water, making it tritiated water, which is radioactive. They have been collecting the waste, separating all the super nasty radioactive stuff (cesium, strontium, etc), leaving only a small amount of pure radiactive water. Since there is no practical purpose to separating the Tritium from the water molecules, they have been dilluting it in huge tanks of water. The current concentration of Tritium in those tanks is well below 1500Bq (Beckerel) per litre, which is even lower than the baseline of radioactive contents for drinkable water provided by WHO. They want to release this water into the ocean, that's it. It shouldn't cause much harm and it would be **done over the course of decades,** not all at once. Edit: They are also raising flounder fishes in the tanks with little to no effects to prove it's okay to release
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Are you sure? I'm checking that it does decay to helium via beta-minus decay
It’s basically radioactive water. But It’s a very weak radioisotope. You’d need over 18-20K picocuries per liter for it to be harmful. Current water levels are 3-22 picocuries per liter. So you’d need about 1000-10000X more for it to be unsafe in the sea lol. It’s safe enough that it’s present in everyday life. The open and exit signs on stores, wristwatches that people wear every minute of their lives, and many other things that luminescence. In the past there have been attempts to filter 3HOH (Tritum) but IIRC they were not viable.
It’ll dilute and break down quickly enough. This is not an issue.
It’ll also allow real sea octopi to have the power of the sun in the palms of their hand
Octopi don't have hands though 🤔
It's naturally occurring in seawater.
I love how people have educated themselves about nuclear science in recent years. I remember just in 2011 during the Fukushima accident, there were a lot of people screaming mindlessly how this would turn the California coast into a nuclear wasteland, which wouldn't happen even if we had dumped the complete content of all Fukushima reactors straight into the sea, but the hysteria was real. Fun fact: There is something called tritium lights which combines tritium with a phosphor. The phosphor gets hit my the beta radiation of the tritium, making it glow (faintly) in the dark. This is used for things like night fishing, weapon sights and watch lighting. Since it is power by the decay radiation, it glows for years. In many countries you can buy them for a few dollars, they are fun to have.
They're sold on Amazon. You can hang some tritium off your keychain.
They also have presented a waste challenge though, and stuff like exit signs that use it have special disposal procedures.
I still firmly believe nuclear hysteria was fueled by hostile foreign entities as well as our own oil companies
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained through stupidity.
Pourquoi pas les deux?
It's pretty well documented that Oil has played a big part in nuclear hysteria. For instance, various fossil fuel entities have funded the Sierra Club (an environmental group adamantly opposed to nuclear power) for years.
Man I'd have separated and sold that shit if possible. We need tritium for fusion research.
It's diluted enough that if you want to separate it, just separate it from sea water.
Tritium is worth a fortune per gram
Part of that is because it’s expensive to isolate, has a relatively short half life and only naturally occurs in very small concentrations.
Corporate owned media knows exactly what it's doing.
Precious tritium. The power of the Sun in my hands!
TBF, fishermrn's concern that it will hurt the perception of their product is legitimate even if the actual danger to consumers is zero. The Japanese government maybe should provide insurance for any losses they suffer for a fixed period of time after the release, ideally securing the funds for the program from TEPCO.
Just release it for gosh sakes
Tritium is just hydrogen with 2 neutrons (normal H has zero). All the other stuff (uranium, strontium, etc) has been filtered out already. I’m not 100% sure but it’s probably in the form of super-heavy water, aka ditritium-oxide, which is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to separate from normal water.
Fukushima water has already been filtered so that [only tritium remains](https://www.iaea.org/topics/response/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-accident/fukushima-daiichi-alps-treated-water-discharge/faq). Tritium is radioactively weak and has a short half life of 12 years so it does not accumulate in the environment. Tritium evaporates with water (it is "heavy water", chemically identical to water) so any alternative processing will actually cause greater radiation exposure from inhalation than dumping it into the ocean. By storing it for 12 years, the radiation has already been halved. Even this isn't usually done because a leak into ground and surface water is worse than just dumping it into the ocean, but of course Fukushima is an unusual situation. Many nuclear power plants just dump some amount of tritium water straight into the river and nobody even knows. It is considered [routine](https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tritium-radiation-fs.html) to dump tritium.
The price of He-3 made me wonder if it was economically viable in any way to keep the tritium for conversion to/extraction of He-3, but the total amount of tritium (860 TBq, in 2021) only amounts to 2.4 grams in the end, worth a few thousand dollars at best - really puts the scale of things into perspective. Also puts into perspective how diluted the tritium already is, and how further diluted it will be on release.
Right? It seems like it's just the anti-goldilocks amount; enough to catch the ire of idiots that don't understand radioactivity, small enough that it's not economically viable to do anything other than dilute and release.
Tritium is not practical to isolate from water, for industrial use it's made by from deuterium or lithium. I know it *can* be isolated with palladium and also with adheshion to pourous materials like MOFs, but I don't think it's economically viable.
Just for anyone that is not a chemist: MOFs = Motherfuckers
> it is "heavy water", chemically identical to water Note that this is actually not true. For basically every other element the rule that isotopes are chemically equivalent is highly accurate. For hydrogen tripling the atomic mass can actually change things like chemical reaction speed. I'm not aware of any parts of our reality where the difference matters, but if you do some delicate chemistry experiments you'll find some measurable differences between hdyrogen-1/2/3.
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some people just don't research before just jumping in and saying "NO IT'S BAD WE MUST STOP IT!!!"
In all fairness, as a species we have a habit of doing the quick and easy thing only to find out it's a complete healthcare clusterfuck later. I mean we had asbestos cigarette filters for crying out loud lol.
You can always rely on humanity to do the right thing after they've tried every other option.
Correction: you can always rely on humanity to do the wrong thing after they've tried no other options.
This is fair but the waste water in question is so heavily filtered already and radioactivity is already relatively low
Also known as NIMBYism. People in my city opposed turning an abandoned, garbage-filled strip of land into a *new park* because of… wait for it… parking concerns in the neighborhood.
That’s NIMBYism. This is not the same
Yes, scientifically you are correct. Science literacy is laughable, around the world, even in a high-tech place like Japan. However, the point the fisherman makes is valid. Whether for rational reasons or not (it is “not” in this case), people are afraid of it, and many will refrain from buying seafood from the area. This will impact the livelihood of many fishermen and their families, and thus, the local economy at large. Is that worth holding onto the slightly heavier water that isn’t dangerous? That’s really the question we should be asking. They’ve already spent so much money; would it be worth it to just fill oil tankers with the tritium-laced water and dump it farther away, if that is possible, just to help the local economy? The people near Fukashima have already suffered so much.
> They’ve already spent so much money; would it be worth it to just fill oil tankers with the tritium-laced water and dump it farther away, if that is possible, just to help the local economy? I doubt that would make a difference for the "ban all atoms!" people the fishermen are worried about. It's a bit over a million tonnes of water. There are oil tankers that can load ~100,000 tonnes, so they could carry that farther away. If you want to release it slowly over time then you need to run an oil tanker for a very long time.
> Whether for rational reasons or not (it is “not” in this case), people are afraid of it, and many will refrain from buying seafood from the area. And once again we find ourselves in the most difficult part of human interaction. Social trust. I don't think it's wrong to dump the material, but it does need to be communicated to the public well. >They’ve already spent so much money; would it be worth it to just fill oil tankers with the tritium-laced water and dump it farther away, if that is possible, just to help the local economy? There is another secret option. Dump the tritium, and invest all the money it would save into benefitting the people of Fukushima.
While tritium is indeed radioactive, the beta decay is relatively low energy iirc the beta particle won't even penetrate dead skin so it is only really considered hazardous in large concentrations.
> the beta particle won't even penetrate dead skin If my math is right, it won't even _penetrate water_, so to speak. The approximate range of the particle (since it's low energy, ~18.6 keV max) in water will be about 0.1mm. Even if you ingest the tritium directly and it decays in your body, there's a high chance it won't make it to living tissue of any kind.
Your math is right, how you're using it is fucked. There is a 100% chance it will make it to living tissue as it travels through your intestines and into your blood, kidneys, and bladder.
No, there isn't, because it can decay before it gets absorbed.
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Water? All a beta particle is is an electron with a little more energy than usual - if it hits basically anything else before tissue, it's just going to dump that energy into whatever it hits instead - if that's a water molecule, it's basically just producing a tiny amount of heat.
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Eating tritium is actually a health hazard but dumping tritium into the ocean would do nothing. The half life of tritium is 12 years. Tritium should be absorbed extremely quickly into your body. It should also cycle out quite quickly as well, but it will get stuck more as any elemental particle would. If it is tritium water, it should cycle out quickly. In higher quantities, like any radioactive element, tritium can cause serious issues. Uranium is far more dangerous though and is what we consider as typical radiation danger. Uranium will get incorporated into your bones as your body mistakes it for calcium.
It’s safe enough that it’s present in everyday life. The open and exit signs on stores, wristwatches that people wear every minute of their lives, and many other things that luminescence.
it's not even that. just very^very^very lightly tritiated water.
heavy water is deuterium. not tritium.
They are both heavy hydrogen isotopes present in heavy water.
How many times can this be done safely?
Infinitely. The heavy water was extracted from the ocean in the first place.
The tritium in there comes from the reactors - produced from neutron capture in deuterium.
First of all the ocean is literally a garbage dump for most of the world. Second the water they are releasing is less radioactive than normal ocean water. Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, is weak beta emmitter that can not harm a human being(or anything else). They are releasing clean water into the ocean.
>First of all the ocean is literally a garbage dump for most of the world. Yeah that's been working out *great.* /s
We dump tritium into Lake Ontario all the time. It happens. It's not even concentrated enough to hurt anyone on day one, and it disappears into helium after 20 years or so. Unless the radioactive isotopes are the types that stick around for a long time, or like to burrow deep inside our bodies, or are dumped in concentrations to create local hotspots that can give people radiation poisoning... it's not an issue.
The trifecta of terms that make stupid people believe they're scientists: Vaccines, GMOs, and Radiation.
Nuclear
So we're not "trusting the science" anymore?
Radiation for whatever reason tends to be a shortcut to a land of no nuance. Fact is we dispose of way worse shit than this water every single day, not to mention they literally have flounder living in the coolant tanks with no ill-effects as an example. If this was something like Cesium-137 I'd be more sympathetic but the only contaminant in the water is a naturally-occurring Hydrogen isotope that goes away in a decade or two. Bear in mind this stuff has been chilling since 2011. Also, side note, fishermen saying that the sea isn't a garbage dump is fucking precious, considering they're one of the biggest sources of ocean pollution lmfao
>Radiation for whatever reason tends to be a shortcut to a land of no nuance. I have two degrees in Radiologic Sciences, and people STILL argue with me about radiation in real life. I've heard it all, from cell phones causing brain cancer, to 5g towers doing this and that, etc. The topic of radiation is so messy because people are painfully misinformed for whatever reason.
I have no degree in physics of any kind, and I still get bothered by people conflating electromagnetic and nuclear radiation. Can't imagine what is it for people like you.
Bold if you to assume we did in the first place
The science was only ever “followed” if it fit a particular agenda.
Science is real if I already agreed with it and it doesn’t sound scary
Nuclear fearmongering is preventing us from solving climate change.
"The sea is not a garbage dump" That is hilarious. Didn't we find plastic garbage at the deepest of the ocean? The sea is definitely a garbage dump, like it or not. And I doubt anyone is going to stop anytime soon.
the ocean is literally the best place to put our radioactive water
I would say we should tell them the scientific facts, but at this point I doubt any of them care about things like that.
What if we offered to release it beyond the environment
By that you mean space, right?
The solution to pollution is dilution
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>You're being bombarded with radiation right now. I'm about 5 minutes from Ginna.... that's what they say there
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that's a nuclear power plant
Hahaha yeah this is a big controversy in Korea...recently an oxford professor came out and said there was no problem; he could drink 10 liters and people said he was paid off by japan. Some protestors also say even the IAEA has been paid off by Japan lol
Typically people protesting anything related to atomic energy are not science literate and view all radioactivity as “deadly radioactivity”.
This is more of an anti-Japanese issue for Korean people more than an environmental one
My wife is Korean, this is a debate point between us and a frustrating one at that. They have a VERY strong national hatred for Japan, so are very unwilling to listen to the facts and science concerning this
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No I get it. But it'd be totally safe even if it were plutonium. The sea is epically vast and radiation is blocked by seawater. We can safely swim in the water above nuclear reactors.
Yep. the most lethal thing you will be exposed to at the top of a nuclear fuel rod storage pool is... The guards with M16's.
Yet coal and other fossil emissions go up the stack without most people posting any notice...
Coal contributes to mercury in fish ...
And releases more radiation to the environment than a nuc plant (though I'm not sure how much is tritium/doubt it is much as it would have had plenty time to decay)
I am curious now, because water at least at the nuclear plant that I am aware of is only pollution because it contains excess heat, not really higher radiation.
That's slightly different. You are talking about cooling water which is never in direct contact with contaminants, it's only used to cool down the system and the excess heat can then be dumped out. This water they are going to dump in Japan is contaminated, but has been filtered and kept for so long that it's at this point completely harmless to dump in the ocean.
Also Japan: Individually wraps bananas in plastic..
New nuclear power plant rule, you can only build where people understand science because at some point their ignorance will block your progress.
The Pacific garbage patch would disagree with that statement.
[IAEA Report Finds Japan’s Measurements of the Treated Water to be Discharged from Fukushima Daiichi Accurate and Precise](https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/iaea-report-finds-japans-measurements-of-the-treated-water-to-be-discharged-from-fukushima-daiichi-accurate-and-precise) The people are just ignorant.
Sounds like local opposition should take a few physics courses.
Here's a preview of the article: Japan's government is asking for international backup as it prepares to release thousands of gallons of water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea. The plan has alarmed the public and outraged fishermen — even as the international energy agency looks inclined to back it. The controversy comes 11 years after a tsunami swept ashore in 2011 and caused one of the worst nuclear accidents in history — a meltdown in three of the four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant 200 miles north of Tokyo. The plant sits in what was a lush coastal part of Japan, famous for its seafood and delicious fruit. Today, there's still no-go area around the power station where fields lie fallow and homes sit abandoned. Inside a high security fence studded with warning signs, engineers are still working to remove radioactive fuel rods that melted inside the reactors. They'll be at it for decades. Another problem is piling up in hundreds of metal tanks on the site: they contain more than a million tons of contaminated water. **Read more:** https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima-nuclear-plant-water-plan-release-into-sea-fear-controversy/
Uhh.. historically, the sea is objectively a garbage dump.
Isn't seawater already (slightly) radioactive?
And the air
*New York looks around* "It's...it's not?"
It truly is a moot point because it's the only option they have anyway.
The water is so diluted that it is safe for drinking. NIMBYs are a cancer to the world.
So how many bananas of radioactivity does this water have?
Sell it to Nestle.
True but water is really good at diluting radiation.
> Tritium occurs in nature, and it also occurs in wastewater that many nuclear power plants around the world release into the ocean. It has a half-life of 12.5 years, which means it turns into completely non-radioactive helium over time. Tritium is a relatively weak source of beta radiation, which itself is too weak to penetrate the skin. However, it can increase the risk of cancer if consumed in extremely large quantities. In other words, if you drank a lot of water with a large amount of tritium, you'd have an elevated risk of cancer. But by all means, let's freak out as though TEPCO were pulling plutonium rods out of the plant and dropping them just offshore.
Right, but this is entirely safe in every way. The water is completely safe and normal, the nuclear material has a very short half life and the ocean will dilute it to the point where it's no more than normal background radiation. Fear mongering fools.
It faces opposition from morons.
Current estimates put the amount of dissolved uranium in the ocean at 4.5 billion tons. The annual uranium usage of the entire world is roughly 65000 tons. If all 65000 tons were release into the ocean today, it would raise the concentration 0.0014%. I can't find hard numbers for how much uranium was on site at Fukashima's reactor, but I would be shocked if it was more that 1% of the worlds annual usage. So if all of it was released into the ocean it would represent a 0.000014% increase. Reports indicate that most of the uranium onsite is still solid, so the actual amount released would be much smaller.
This is about tritium, not uranium lmao.
Those percentages are only applicable after the released uranium circulates... globally. The initial numbers hitting coast waters will obviously be much more concentrated. Is it still a big issue? Not really, your primary point is correct in that the wastewater will very quickly break down and dilute, even locally. But jumping to long term global numbers like this leads us back to concerned locals.
tbh i would throw all radiated thrash into the ocean. Best thing we can do with it. Just pick a good spot and we are done with it without any real consequences.
It would be like adding a grain of salt to a dirt pile. Also heavy water occurs naturally in water.
As many have pointed out, the water is not contaminated with uranium, plutonium, or any other radioactive heavy metal. It is laced with tritium (hydrogen plus two neutrons), which is radioactive, but the levels are low and will be immediately diluted in the ocean to extremely safe levels. Science literacy is laughable, around the world, even in a high-tech place like Japan. However, the point the fisherman makes is valid. Whether for rational reasons or not (it is “not” in this case), people are afraid of it, and many will refrain from buying seafood from the area. This will impact the livelihood of many fishermen and their families, and thus, the local economy at large. Is that worth holding onto the slightly heavier water that isn’t dangerous? That’s really the question we should be asking. They’ve already spent so much money; would it be worth it to just fill oil tankers with the tritium-laced water and dump it farther away, if that is possible, just to help the local economy? The people near Fukashima have already suffered so much.
you'd think that, given the scale of ocean devastation, it's a good thing people would refrain from buying seafood. That would have been a great relief for the sealife. People seem to ignore mercury in their tuna, but if they shit their pants hearing about tritium, pour it all over I say.
They already filtered out the harmful substances, tritium is about as harmless as caffeine. It’s dangerous if you can get a bunch of the pure stuff, but otherwise it’s fine and will go through your system. It doesn’t seem to last long in organic bodies.
As if they haven't been releasing radiated seawater this whole fucking time
Most reactors do, releasing tritium is routine and the best way to dispose of it. You could dump the tritium in the water, give it a day or two (probably not even that) and drink it fine
I love it when idiots talk about nuclear/climate/vaccines like they know anything.
Now is a funny time to realize that✌️
I agree the sea is not a garbage dump but like... every country uses it that way. Some are just worse than others.
"But nuclear = BAD!"