Live data from Hacker News

Japan to release Fukushima water into ocean

reuters.com

11–20 of 31 posts

Re: Japan to release Fukushima water into ocean

#11

“190 becquerels per liter” Oh gee oh wow! 1 millicurie (mCi) = 37 megabecquerels (MBq) 1 PET/CT scan is between 4-20 mCi. So I guess if you drink, snort, bathe and just enematize yourselves with 48,684 liters of this poisonous horrible water it will be the same as getting a single PET CT. The amount of whining, specifically Chinese whining, is absurd. Especially as their shitty air pollution blankets the entire Pacif…

Apparently even 1 banana smoothie will deliver an order of magnitude more radiation than drinking 1l of that water. https://ionactive.co.uk/resource-hub/blog/a-banana-smoothie-...

Re: Japan to release Fukushima water into ocean

#13
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the ocean is vast. So wouldn't this mix in and ultimately be an imperceptible change in the average?

Maybe globally and eventually, but at first the nearby nations could possibly have elevated levels in their surrounding waters for the time being.

My intuition could be way off, but I think there's more than 10x more water (even at some ridiculously thin surface depth) between Korea and Japan than there is in the Fukushima tanks.

Wikipedia says 210 km³ flows into the Sea of Japan yearly. The article says the total stored water is "one million metric tons", which is... probably within the measurement error of the total SoJ flow.

Re: Japan to release Fukushima water into ocean

#14
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the ocean is vast. So wouldn't this mix in and ultimately be an imperceptible change in the average?

Maybe globally and eventually, but at first the nearby nations could possibly have elevated levels in their surrounding waters for the time being.

I wanted to math this out.

East china sea: ~770,000 square km surface area; 350m average depth = 269,500,000,000 cubic meters of water

First discharge = 7,800 cubic meters over 17 days == approx. 459m^3 released / day == 1.70315399 x 10^-9

They might find five or six extra tritium atoms per liter of water.

Does this one off make it okay to dump into the ocean generally? No obviously not, the ocean is not just a magic dumpster to make bad things disappear. But in this case, tritium already exists naturally in sea water, and the introduced concentration has already been minimized.

If your personal heuristics for avoiding risk push you towards avoiding Japanese seafood over this, that's fine, but you should actually be avoiding all seafood.

Re: Japan to release Fukushima water into ocean

#15

Looks like I'll have to ban Japanese products (Tea/Fish) and potentially anything from the pacific.. Japanese government is irresponsible

Did you read how high the WHO limit is for drinking water? Just using that as a baseline, this doesn't seem all that irresponsible.

Re: Japan to release Fukushima water into ocean

#19
post #5
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mixed bag. https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1029/ML102990104.pdf Who is 10000, but this varies with EU having a 100 bq/l limit, US a 740 limit, Canada 7000/l So going by WHO recommendation it's fine, but 2x what the limit in Europe is. Looks like normal levels are 5-15 /l depending where it's measured. So: this is probably 10x what you'd encounter naturally but allegedly way under the limit depending on who is makin…

But the ocean is vast. So wouldn't this mix in and ultimately be an imperceptible change in the average?

In theory yes. In the real world I would not be surprised to hear that there are higher concentrations in specific areas due to currents and whatnot (ie it would take a while to evenly spread out)

Re: Japan to release Fukushima water into ocean

#20

Looks like I'll have to ban Japanese products (Tea/Fish) and potentially anything from the pacific.. Japanese government is irresponsible

Did you read how high the WHO limit is for drinking water? Just using that as a baseline, this doesn't seem all that irresponsible.

You'd be surprised what the WHO allows McDonald's to put in their food and in the whole supply chain

Do you own research of the risks, I listen to scientists, not politicians

Post reply on HN