Fukushima: Japan will have to dump radioactive water into Pacific, minister says

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/10/fukushima-japan-will-have-to-dump-radioactive-water-into-pacific-minister-says

by asymmetric • 7 years ago

39 30 7 years ago

theguardian.com

Havoc2• 7 years ago

I guess we get to role play all those nuclear wasteland games in real life.

Just kidding. Wasn’t there a calc a while back that the concentrations are actually that bad? ie in some cases barely noticable against background radiation

krageon2• 7 years ago

The nuclear field has as far as I'm aware always been full of people claiming (sometimes with pretty sophisticated reasoning) that "it's not that bad" (used to justify storing waste or just dumping it).

Havoc2• 7 years ago

Fair. I mean the correct answer is clearly zero but it's an imperfect world.

Even if it is actually bad...I don't see any other options? Maybe massive oil tankers to transport it & dump it in a desert somewhere?

pvaldes8• 7 years ago

Here comes the excuses. Who was irresponsible in the past, will be irresponsible in the future if is allowed to do so. I would not expect a different response.

Alaska, British Columbia and the rest of US West Coast will eat the garbage shaped as fishes, by courtesy of sea currents, (and is obvious that nobody cares). Strange times.

rowanG0772• 7 years ago

It's really sad the guardian doesn't quantify at all how contaminated the water is. This basically has no news value because of it. Is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea? No way to tell without any hard numbers.

pvaldes8• 7 years ago

Is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea? No way to tell without any hard numbers.

Having plenty of numbers and data is great, specially for making reports and speeches, but maths are not the only tool that a human brain can use. Often logical reasoning is powerful enough.

Is a fact that radioactivity kills people. No need to demonstrate it statistically. We have enough empirical evidence.

Is a fact also that radioactivity is bioaccumulative.

We don't need a single "four", "seven" or a "twelve" to understand that dumping a bioaccumulative poison in a coastal area inhabited by millions and that provides a considerable part of the diet of this people, is definitely not a good idea.

antientropic• 7 years ago

I think you have an incorrect idea of "logic reasoning" if you think that that's a scientifically sound argument. To know whether this contaminated water will be insufficiently diluted in the ocean to cause problems, you definitely do need to use numbers. I mean, if it's diluted to a trillionth of the natural background radiation, then who cares?

wcoenen• 7 years ago

Is a fact also that radioactivity is bioaccumulable.

This is a very vague and inaccurate statement. Some radioactive substances bioaccumulate, while others do not.

For example, caesium -137 could be a problem for bioaccumulation, but tritium is not.

Nodraak4• 7 years ago

Is a fact that radioactivity kills people

That is false. Or at least very inaccurate.

High levels of radioactivity kills people. In Europe we receive ~5 mS per year, ~10 in the US. Pilots and radiography doctors are at ~20-50 mS/year. Nobody dies because of this. You could double this background radiation and nothing would happen.

So now the question to ask is: how much do they want to dump, and what would be radiation received by the animals and humans around this place. With this we can discuss tradeoff and make an informed decision.

Most importantly, for such important matters[1], you should not run away screaming as soon as you hear the word "radioactive", but rather think and make decisions based on facts, not fears.

[1] In a context of global warming, a way to produce electricity with virtually zero CO2 is pretty cool. Compare France vs Germany: there is a 7x factor in the CO2 produced (dont take my word on that, go check the numbers yourself). Until we know how to store electricity, our best bet is nuclear, not intermittent solar or wind.

rowanG0772• 7 years ago

Is a fact that radioactivity kills people. No need to demonstrate it statistically. We have enough empirical evidence.

It's a fact radioactivity kills people over certain thresholds. This is the same as saying water kills people or potatoes kill people. Radioactivity itself is not bio accumulative. Some radioactive particles are bio accumulative.

Your post shows a staggering amount of misinformation which is exactly the reason we need hard numbers.

Recurecur2• 7 years ago

Is a fact that radioactivity kills people. No need to demonstrate it statistically. We have enough empirical evidence.

Actually, no. It is highly unlikely that 100 tons per day (steady state rate) of this water being introduced to the Pacific would make a meaningful difference to anyone.

Bear in mind that mixing 100 tons of water with a single cubic kilometer of water is a dilution factor of 10,000,000x. The ocean contains a LOT more than 1 km^3. ;-)

To educate you a bit about low levels of ionizing radiation (hormesis):

> In a Chinese study which has compared area with average radiation exposure of 2.31 mSv/y with a similar area with 0.96 mSv/y average exposure, the cancer mortality rate was lower in the high-background group (High Background Radiation Research Group 1980). However, this difference was statistically significant only in the oldest-aged group (40–70 years of age), i.e., in those individuals who have the greatest lifelong exposure to high background levels of radiation. In the other large-scale Chinese study, the cancer mortality rate was lower in the area with a relatively high background radiation (74,000 people), while the control group who lived in an area with low background radiation (78,000 people) had a higher rate of cancer mortality (Wei et al. 1990). In a similar Indian study, the cancer incidence/mortality rates was significantly less in areas with a high-background radiation level than in similar areas with a low background radiation level (Nambi and Soman 1987).

"Radiation Hormesis: Historical Perspective and Implications for Low-Dose Cancer Risk Assessment" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2889502/

Accujack• 7 years ago

Is a fact that radioactivity kills people.

Is a fact that water kills people. 100% of people who drink water will eventually die, and people who try to breathe it usually die even sooner.

adam0c• 7 years ago

call me crazy but why dont they just fire it off into space... ahaha!

tmountain• 7 years ago

The use of rockets raises the threat of an accidental release of the waste into the atmosphere if there was an explosion.

ryanmercer• 7 years ago

If we had a space elevator (or some exotic anti-gravity/energy propulsion), this would be exactly what we do but as has already been stated it is a no-go with chemical rockets.

Nodraak4• 7 years ago

Very good twitter thread on this thing, with numbers and detailled explanations (in French, sorry): https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1164497983402053634

Check also his other threads, it's a gold mine

lioeters• 7 years ago

They've been dumping (or leaking) hundreds of tons of radioactive water into the Pacific every day since the incident in 2011. It sounds like they will have to dump more, as a controlled release.

[using groundwater] to prevent the three damaged reactor cores from melting
[built] a frozen underground wall to prevent groundwater reaching the three damaged reactor buildings [which reduced the flow]..to about 100 tonnes a day.
the prime minister..assured..that the situation was “under control”.

Not convinced.

lholden• 7 years ago

It seems they have primarily isolated the remaining contaminant to tritium?

This seems like it might be a nice source of tritium for tritium deuterium fusion reactors? I am quite sure I am missing some fairly critical elements here... but it certainly would be lovely if that was the solution. (I mean, there are not exactly a lot of fusion reactors... heh).

vilhelm_s• 7 years ago

There is a long article in two parts "Radioactive water at Fukushima Daiichi: What should be done?" [1,2] which was previously discussed here at Hacker News [3].

The thing I find most interesting is that even the Fukushima fishermen agree that dumping the water will be harmless, but they are still very opposed to it because they think consumers will be irrationally scared and not buy fish caught in the Fukushima region.

Over the course of our long conversation, Sawada frankly acknowledged that the scientific consensus indicates very low risk if the water is released. “It’s not a question of scientific understanding,” he said. “We understand that tritiated water is released from other nuclear power plants in Japan and around the world. But we think it will be impossible for the public in general to understand why tritium is considered low risk, and expect there will be a large new backlash against Fukushima marine products no matter how scientifically it is explained.” I pointed out that the [fishery] coops agreed to the release of the subdrain and bypass water from Daiichi, and asked what was different about this. He pointed out that in those cases, the water is pumped out before it is contaminated, and the public seems to understand that the contamination levels are already very low.

[1] https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-1-radioactive-water-a... [2] https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-2-radioactive-water-a... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304208

beautifulfreak• 7 years ago

I suppose the problem is the other contaminants, because tritium removal isn't too difficult. Cost must be the real problem. Nothing cheaper than dumping it in the ocean.

https://www.nuclearsolutions.veolia.com/en/our-expertise/tec...

Fukushima: Japan will have to dump radioactive water into Pacific, minister says

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