Japan May Start Controversial Fukushima Water Release Next Month 60
A United Nations watchdog approved Japan's controversial plan to start releasing treated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant next month. As Nikkei notes in its reporting, the water is still radioactive since "radioactive tritium cannot be removed with existing technology." From the report: The IAEA's report concluded that the Japanese project to release the water meets its safety standards. Japan's government in January gave the planned timing for the ocean release as "spring to summer 2023." Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said this week that there was "no change in this policy." The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will brief local officials and others on Wednesday about the treated water in Fukushima prefecture. Grossi will also participate.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings (TEPCO), the operator of the disaster-hit plant, uses an advanced liquid processing system (ALPS) and other equipment to reduce radioactive substances in contaminated water to levels within national standards. However, radioactive tritium cannot be removed with existing technology, and the treated water has so far been stored in tanks on the plant site. TEPCO plans to dilute the treated water with a large amount of seawater to lower the tritium concentration to less than 1/40th of the national safety standard before releasing it into the sea.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings (TEPCO), the operator of the disaster-hit plant, uses an advanced liquid processing system (ALPS) and other equipment to reduce radioactive substances in contaminated water to levels within national standards. However, radioactive tritium cannot be removed with existing technology, and the treated water has so far been stored in tanks on the plant site. TEPCO plans to dilute the treated water with a large amount of seawater to lower the tritium concentration to less than 1/40th of the national safety standard before releasing it into the sea.
Keep up the good work! (Score:2)
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Distillation? (Score:2)
Tritium (Score:5, Informative)
It's quite literally in the water molecules themselves.
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Interesting... OK... How about electrolysis?
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Tritium is very similar to regular hydrogen is any chemical way. It acts almost exactly the same, so will electrolyze just the same.
Re:Tritium (Score:5, Informative)
Drawing a box around parent's post, you can concentrate heavy or tritrated water by boiling or electrolysis, but the separation rate is mind-bogglingly slow. The difference in boiling point between normal, and heavy or tritrated water is only about 1.5C.
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Tritium is a hydrogen isotope. Boiling to distill it would result in radioactive steam.
LK
tritium removal (Score:2)
CANDU reactor facilities do tritium removal; it can't be filtered out but it can be removed by other means.
The truth is that it was determined to be too expensive; it's a lie that it is not possible.
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It's a political problem in that Canada has sold the extracted tritium to the USA for its weapons programs. And India for its H-bombs as well.
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The US produces its own tritium and has for decades. Since the mid-2000s, this has been done by inserting tritium-producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARs) at the Bar Watts nuclear power plant and capturing the tritium and helium byproducts, then separating the two.
India also has its own tritium production capabilities, though they don't seem to be documented as well as US sources. They started with CANDU reactors (same design Canada uses that produces tritium) but developed their own pressurized heavy-wate
But why? (Score:2)
You'd only do that if there were commercially valuable amounts of tritium in the water, and if the concentrations are high enough.
With lots of water weakly contaminated with tritium? Not worth doing. Mix it in to the Pacific Ocean with ll the natural radioactive contaminants.
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CANDU reactor facilities do tritium removal;
Even after they have extracted all the tritium that is feasible, the remaining water from CANDU has far more tritium remaining, than the extremely dilute water being released in Japan. I assume the Canadians store that in ponds or tanks for a decades?
Re: tritium removal (Score:5, Insightful)
You can concentrate tritium via distillation or electrolysis, distillation is used quite commonly for effluent testing. Electrolysis is usually used for extremely low level monitoring due to how long it takes and how low you can monitor to. Neither would be particularly feasible here. In the distillation you'd usually manage the chemistry to stop particulate and organics from spilling over into the steam, and I have strong suspicions that even if you had a facility to do the distillation you'd end up making more problems trying to manage that chemistry full of weird shit from melted rods. You could end up making a cake of something pretty nasty trying to get rid of something pretty benign.
The real question of course is why would you bother. Tritium doesn't bio accumulate. The halflife is long enough to stop it from being a serious short term threat but short enough it'll dissapear in a human lifetime. The energy of the beta decay is so low as to be nearly meaningless from a dose perspective. When I used to do those calculations it quickly became obvious that you'd have to use reactor water as your sole source of hydration most of your life and drink it at a rate like you were training for the Olympics for the tritium itself to matter. The fact that it's regulated in the environment at all is kind of a joke, it's main use is as a radiological marker that "hey, your shit is leaking, your should figure out why."
This whole controversy falls squarely in the realm of non experts making a fuss about something they just don't like in principle. The "scientists" I've seen quoted against doing it are not experts in environmental dosimetry. Radiation has always been a science blind spot for many, in the same way that vaccine science is. If you're predisposed not to like it you can latch onto any asshole in a lab coat to justify your fear. The reality is that in this case there's no real risk unless they fuck up and dump the solids from the tanks accidentally, and even then the consequences would likely be localized to the immediate area of Japanese coastal fisheries. Sure, no scientist is going to say the risk is absolute zero, but on some level you have to trust the experts to be able to handle a simple task, in the same way you have to trust we aren't shipping millions of botched vaccines.
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"...it's main use is as a radiological marker that "hey, your shit is leaking, your should figure out why."
Don't forget, it's also often used in the fun, glowy keychain industry.
Anti Nuke Trolls in 3 ... 2... (Score:3)
Cue up the anti nuke trolls.
Once its deluded the amount being released, the radioactivity will be negligible.
Aspartame was also perfectly safe for humans until (Score:2)
the WHO suddenly last month said it was not.
You never know the long term effects.
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Yet we know the long-term effects of huge amounts of CO2 releases in the atmosphere, which are far more dangerous and damaging than anything else. And we are still doing it. This is the fun thing with nuclear-related news: people get triggered and don't even bother to look at the science to see what's what. Whereas CO2 is invisible, and doesn't sound as bad ("after all, I am breathing out some CO2 too!"), so they just let it go.
The best advice I can give you would be to at least read the linked article, and
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Aspartame is C14H18N2O5 and it's been classified as a type 2B [theguardian.com] carcinogen. From the article: "Class 2B means there is a vague and unproven risk that something might cause cancer, not that it does or is likely to." So I'm not going to fuss about the occasional Coke Zero. But C14H18N2O5 is a somewhat complex molecule, any toxicity would be chemical, and I'd be more surprised at a claim that there weren't any dodgy side effects.
Tritium is H. Or it's H2O if you're talking about tritiated water and not just t
The Godzilla Premonition... (Score:2)
Godzilla was clearly a premonition.
To many, It may have been all stories, movies and legends, but give Japan enough time, and eventually those sea creatures are going to walk right out of the ocean and destroy Tokyo.
Go Japan!
--
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Mahatma Gandhi
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Fishzilla
There was never any alternative (Score:3)
You can't really process that much water to a degree that would be viable in the timeline necessary to try to remove fuel in the next decade or so. Sucks, but that is reality. Best of bad options.
Hopefully TEPCO does the releases in batches where there is time to keep it from accumulating, but they are limited in their options.
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They could remove half of the tritium in about a decade, due to the natural decay.
Apparently there is 0.014L of contaminated water in 860,000,000L of stored water.
Or there was in 2016, 7 years later it's probably around 0.01L
Came here to say this (Score:4, Interesting)
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It was 12 years ago. Just on raw half-life, that's two halvings, so it's down by 3/4. I'm not sure what reactions may have happened since that might have added tritium, but I imagine that it's not very much.
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The only "not a good situation" is the ceaseless hysteria around harmless water. (You could literally drink it, if it weren't for the absurd regulations.) Bottle it, or dig a pond and stock it with some freshwater fish; dumping it into the ocean with some elaborate plan for dispersal is merely one of countless ways being used to arbitrarily increase the cost of our best energy source.
(spoiler: the ocean already naturally contains tritium, in addition to potassium and uranium, and many more dangerous things,
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People are worried because of the economic ramifications. After the Fukushima meltdowns, TEPCO and the government didn't do nearly enough to help people affected by it. Many of the victims ended up suing, but due to the way the Japanese legal system works they didn't see huge pay-outs, or even enough to cover what they materially lost.
Farmers and the fishing industry got screwed as well, as people decided to err on the side of caution (especially since trust in the government's claims about safety remain lo
Ridiculous radiation paranoia continues. (Score:5, Informative)
The ocean has uranium 235 spread all through it. It always has. It's fine in there. The best place for things that emit radiation is in water. It absorbs basically everything that can harm people. Fukushima is harmless compared to the massive devastation caused by Deepwater Horizon yet we keep talking about all these non-events and non danger situations as if they matter because "nuclear is scary". It's just not. The coal power plant down the road from me releases more radiation into the environment than Fukushima ever will.and you've never even heard of it.
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Only issue would be if there are desalination plants nearby that would pick up an increased amount of the contamination. Although the radiation exposure risk is low, it is low when it is outside the body. If you end up with it inside you, then it becomes a significantly bigger problem.
Then again, we expose ourselves to radiation when we fly or eat banannas or live downwind from coal plants, etc.
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Re:everything is safe (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is truly safe in the sense you want it to be. You could step out your front door tomorrow and die suddenly from any number of things happening. You run a risk of dying every time you drive your car. But most things are safe enough to not worry actively about, including this water release. Statistics are hard for us humans to wrap our heads around. There are many sources of radiation and radioactivity all around us that are completely natural, and similar in type to that which comes from man-made sources, and far exceed what is released.
Interesting quote from a news article: "A lifetime's worth of seafood caught a few kilometres from the [waste water's] ocean outlet has the tritium radiation equivalent of one bite of a banana."
Obviously the operation of the reactors was flawed and presented more risk than initially thought. Not the reactors themselves mind you, but the ancillary systems that keep the cooling going. Clearly some things were missed and there was negligence, which the Japanese authorities have not let go unaddressed. would I worry about similar plants or even new plants of the same design operated by Tesco? Nope. Not after this. They have made darn sure this can't happen the same way again. That's how science and development works but figuring out what went wrong and making appropriate changes to prevent it from ever happening again.
Far, far more people die from the effects of particulate pollution (which is slightly radioactive) from coal-fire plants than will ever be impacted by current nuclear power sources. But people do like to die from something they understand than something they don't.
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Interesting quote from a news article: "A lifetime's worth of seafood caught a few kilometres from the [waste water's] ocean outlet has the tritium radiation equivalent of one bite of a banana."
And I'd also be willing to bet that most of the tritium in said seafood would be from natural non-fukushima sources.
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You could step out your front door tomorrow and die suddenly from any number of things happening.
You're lucky to make it that far. 450 people die each year just getting out of bed in the morning, to say nothing of those who go to bed and don't wake up.
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The old "banana equivalent dose" myth. Bananas contain potassium, which the body regulates. Eating bananas will only temporarily raise potassium levels in your body, and most of it will be confined to your stomach and then pass out as waste.
Tritium in water is very different, because the body collects and stores water for longer. If you drink it, it takes weeks to completely leave your body. Additionally, that water spreads all over the body, to parts that are particularly vulnerable to radiation that is no
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That's why tritium in water is considered hazardous to human health.
To much water is also considered hazardous to your health. Anything in large quantities is hazardous to your health. Tritium deluded to this level isn't.
common sense 1, Trolls 0.
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While tritium at this level probably is low risk, the point is that comparing it to eating a banana is misleading.
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Good thing, then, that the amount of tritium water in the dilution is many times below the recognized safe ppm limits. Those who eat sea food are already taking into their bodies a tiny amount of tritium water, since it occurs naturally. Will sensitive tests be able to measure a slight increase in tritium concentrations after the release? Yes for sure locally for a while, but the amount will be so small that statistically it does not matter. Ideal? No. Acceptable? You bet.
There are many, many things
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I'm not arguing that it isn't safe, just that BED is dumb.
Even if it is safe, the economic effects are very real.
Everything is radioactive (Score:3, Informative)
This is a lot of concern over nothing, this water is going to go into the sea- which itself holds uranium in similar concentration to the amount of radiation the release water will have.
So this is all basically background radiation we are talking about here. You'd have more radiation exposure from eating a banana [wikipedia.org] than from this water!
foolish in releasing next to shore. (Score:2, Interesting)
Instead, they should load containers on a ship and then release slowly out the backside of the moving ship.
Heck, they could do this on a cargo ship.
Point is, that you want this DILUTED, not concentrated.
Re:foolish in releasing next to shore. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then it is a darn good thing that they are in fact diluting the radioactive water. When I first heard they were going to release radioactive water into the ocean, I was concerned. When I found out the radioactive element is Tritium, I was not as worried.
Tritium does decay and is thus radioactive, but is fairly benign overall. Heck you can buy Tritium glow in the dark gun sites, keyfobs and even pendants on Amazon.
The Beta particles only make it about 1/4 inch in air, and don't get past the epidermis. Dilute the stuff, and worry more about a transoceanic airline flight. Which brings up a question. How does this radiation compare to what the US TSA wants to expose you to when doing full body scans at airports? If someone has a comparison, I would like to know.
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How does this radiation compare to what the US TSA wants to expose you to when doing full body scans at airports? If someone has a comparison, I would like to know.
Depends. Old school x-ray scanners dosed you at a rate of 0.1uSv, that's 1000x lower than getting your arm x-rayed at a doctor, and about the equivalent you'd get from your transatlantic trip. The backscatter x-rays (you know the ones that caused the insane people to come out of the woods about 5-10 years ago claiming the TSA was killing them) dose you at around half that. But most full body scanners I've seen are millimeter wave scanners. They don't dose you at all since it's non-ionising radiation.
In othe
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Tritium isn't dangerous outside your body, although it can be absorbed by touch. Safe products will make sure you can't touch it directly, e.g. with a clear coating or glass covering it.
The problem is when it gets inside your body, especially in water. Your body absorbs the water and tritium, where it can irradiate your internal organs.
The reason why they give people iodine when there is a radiation accident is because is prevents particles building up inside vulnerable organs, by saturating them so they do
Re: foolish in releasing next to shore. (Score:2)
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Even then, tritium is very low hazard. Water cycles through your body all the time, so you'll flush it out. It's got a pretty long half-life and its decay modes aren't very high-energy. Yes, all things considered, you want to minimize exposure to any ionizing radiation. But tritium is a pretty benign isotope, and in this case they're diluting it into the sea, which is enormous and already contains a bunch of tritium through natural decay processes.
All of this presupposes they're really, truly just releasing
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They're not just dumping it all at once. They will dilute it over decades (up to 40 years [science.org]) to levels that would be hard to detect, with a maximum tritium content of one-fortieth of what Japanese safety laws allow in drinking water.
Dilute it until it's legalally diluted enough (Score:2)
That's what they're doing here and it what you can do with anything that needs a legal amount of dilution rather that an actual quantity overall. I'm sure the fishermen of Japan will have no complaints about this ~.