Mirror: https://archive.ph/rvXQA
So I googled what the background level of Tritium is in seawater. The general consensus is that this various based upon where in the world you are, but it’s typically around 500 - 750 becquerels of tritium per m3. The amount they’re releasing is 190 becquerels of tritium per m3, or in other words, they’re reducing the average tritum radioactivity of the water…
So why is this news? Why haven’t the journalists gone, “Stupid people don’t understand how radioactivity and volumetrics work, and are complaining about the Japanese releasing water that is so highly treated it’s cleaner than the ocean average.”?
–edit– Not going to edit the above, but @zifk@sh.itjust.works correctly pointed out I’d got my units wrong… and then they got their units wrong replying. And that’s why we need good journalism who can actually look into this fucking stuff properly, and give reasoned responses!
Actually we both screwed up by a factor of 1000, the article states 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, not cubic meter.
Seems like you have the right order of magnitude, but the sources I’ve seen gives the ocean close to 0.5-2 TU, or “Tritium Units” which correspond to 180 Bq/m^3. So I wouldn’t call the water being released as cleaner, just basically on average with the ocean already.
https://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/etg.tmp/text/woce_method.html https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969718348034
Still the comment should be and stay top because it’s far more informative than most of comments usually
The biggest issue with these topics is the lack of trust toward the scientists, or even forgetting that there are any scientists working on the project. It’s not as if the prime minister woke up to the idea of dumping nuclear waste into the ocean
Because Capitalists have been using scientists to push their agenda for almost a century now this is an article about the oil and tobacco industries using the same scientists.. If you google scientists supporting fossil fuels you can find way too many other examples as well.
That’s a fair argument. Although I am against making a generalization, especially since the IAEA who greenlighted the operations seems to be fairly independent
Oh, I don’t assume that they didn’t do their diligence. I am just explaining why people wouldn’t automatically trust things solely because they have the title “scientist”, even it is a group of them.
I know just enough about radioactivity to know that I don’t know enough about radioactivity to form an opinion on this.
Will there be enough radiation to actually fuck anything up? Or is this just a scary headline sensationalizing something that’s actually benign?
Ehhh, it’s been as cleaned of radiation as possible. My dad did nuclear inspection for a living, including disposal, so I asked him about this when it first hit the news.
In theory, as long as they follow existing protocols, the water isn’t going to be harmful. But that’s the question, really; have they followed protocols? They have oversight, so it shouldn’t be possible for then to half-ass it.
There really isn’t a way to remove tritium though. The levels of that should be low enough to be unimportant.
It’s going to be higher than background radiation, but well under international standards. It isn’t something to be happy about, but it’s as low risk as it gets. Tokyo pumps out way more dangerous things every day just by being a busy city.
It’s sad that nowadays when we read about a limit considered safe by an organization, we have no way of knowing if it came from real studies and analysis or is it just a lobbied value that big players are using to weed out smaller competition because current technology can’t get below the really safe limit anyway
Well, in the case of radiation levels, the science goes back far enough, and with enough duplication/replication that it is as solid as anything that’s an ongoing endeavor gets.
Like, everything is unreasonable technically going to be “to the best of current knowledge” because science is a process, and even when there’s mountains of evidence, there could be newer evidence that contradicts previous conclusions.
But the general dosage limits have been in place and matched predictions for at least my lifetime (around 50 years), since those standards were used by my dad at that time and are still the same. A lot of the nuclear stuff wasn’t done for profit, nor were the standards. So it’s a tad bit better than something like petrochemical data.
I’d phrase it like this; I wouldn’t want to go swimming in the tank the water is stored in, but I wouldn’t worry about swimming in the ocean a few days later at all. The levels are just so low at that point that any danger is a non issue compared to things like smog.
That water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organisation drinking limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre, according to Tepco. A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
TOKYO, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Japan said on Tuesday it will start releasing more than 1 million metric tonnes of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant on Aug. 24, putting into motion a plan that has drawn strong criticism from China.
The plan, approved two years ago by the Japanese government as crucial to decommissioning the plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) (9501.T), has also faced criticism from local fishing groups, who fear reputational damage and a threat to their livelihood.
“I promise that we will take on the entire responsibility of ensuring the fishing industry can continue to make their living, even if that will take decades,” Kishida said on Monday.
Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in July that Japan had shown selfishness and arrogance, and had not fully consulted the international community about the water release.
South Korean activists have also protested the plan, although Seoul has concluded from its own study that the water release meets international standards and said it respects the IAEA’s assessment.
The water was used to cool the fuel rods of Fukushima Daiichi after it melted down in an accident caused by a huge tsunami in 2011 that battered Japan’s eastern coast.
The original article contains 552 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
They have to be doing this because of storage and safety costs.
Doesn’t tritium have a half-life of about 12.3 years? If they delayed the release until, say, after approximately 12 more years, surely half of the tritium in a given sample will have decayed.
Yeah, the article is FUD. They’re releasing far less than most other reactors release, especially from their neighbor China. It’s well below established limits and is highly unlikely to cause any real damage.
From the IAEA:
“Tritium emits weak beta-particles, i.e., electrons, with an average energy of 5.7 keV (kiloelectron-volts), which can penetrate about 6.0 mm of air but cannot penetrate the body through human skin. It may present a radiation hazard if inhaled or ingested but is only harmful to humans in very large doses.”
If a primary producer like phytoplankton is affected, isn’t it likely to impact impact all species that rely on them as a food source?
How about the real concern regarding the question of chronic exposure? If organisms are consistently taking in tritiated water over extended periods, does that constant exposure increases the chances of tritium being incorporated into critical molecules like DNA or proteins? Do we know the likelihood of that leading to long-term biological effects?
Can’t the tritium in tritiated water be incorporated into organic molecules during metabolic reactions? Have we observed the effects of tritium during biosynthesis, where water is a reactant or byproduct? During photosynthesis in phytoplankton, do we know the extent of tritium from tritiated water being incorporated into glucose or other organic molecules?
When marine organisms ingest or absorb tritiated water from their surroundings, it will circulate through their body just like regular water. Since tritiated water behaves chemically like regular water, it would surely be used in all physiological and biochemical processes within the organism.
Do we know the possibility for tritium to become incorporated into marine sediments, especially if it binds with organic matter? Could this create localised hotspots where tritium concentrations are higher than in the surrounding water? If so, won’t benthic organisms (those that live on the ocean floor) be exposed to these at those higher concentrations?
My biggest concern is the possibility of bioaccumulation in the food chain. Granted this would mostly impact small organisms to start, but they would then be consumed by larger predators, and how long before this leads to increased concentrations in apex predators?
I think it’s incredibly foolish for anyone to release water of this nature, Japan or otherwise.
That’s a lot of great questions that I hope there are answers to. But from the article:
That water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organisation drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre
So it’s about 2% of the limit for drinking water. Assuming there’s some correlation between drinking water and ocean water for acquatic life, I think it’s reasonable to assume that this is a trivial amount of tritium.
Yes, some aquatic life is likely to be impacted, but whether that amount is actually statistically significant is another question entirely.
Despite assurances, some neighbouring countries have also expressed scepticism over the safety of the plan, with Beijing the biggest critic.
Here’s an article where Japan claims China releases many times more tritium than Fukushima will. I don’t have access to this article, but if you do, it seems like it should be useful in comparing with the claims in the previous source.
So I think it’s a lot of FUD either from China, anti-nuclear power groups, or both. To me, it seems like something that should probably be studied, but not worried about until we actually have reason to believe it’s problematic.
