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Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe

civilbeat.org

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Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe

#101

Post by Archelaos »

janmalec wrote: post #93
Archelaos wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to put your energy into preventing dirt from getting into the ocean, look literally anywhere else. This line of thinking is what brought about our current environmental clamities. Everybody says: Look, what I am doing to the environemnt is just a tiny, tiny bit of what others are doing. The end result is a massive destruction of the ecosphere. Every dumping of waste into the ocean is a liablity. > the s…

You have completely missed my point. Every time you drive to work or flush your toilet you make an impact to the environment. How do you justify this action? Is it ok because you think that the impact to the environment is small? Will the end result of your action be a "massive destruction of the ecosphere"? Maybe it will be, but you have no other choice in life than evaluate all impacts and improve where you can and…

I think, I understood you very well. The flushing of the toilet is of course also a liability. But my point is, nevertheless to take it serious, even though its impact might be small. I think we should not only focus on where it matters the most, and ignore the rest, but try to improve the situation across the board, including the smaller things.

Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe

#102

Post by Reason077 »

pera wrote: post #94
Reason077 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Tritium is already present in the ocean naturally" Exactly. And if the quantities Japan are talking about are correct (860 TBq / trillion becquerels), this is a huge fuss about nothing. France's La Hague nuclear reprocessing facility discharges many times more tritium than that into the English Channel every single year as part of it's normal operations!

Tritium is not the only radioactive isotope present though: https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-japan-stateless/20... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/fukushima-reac... > In addition to high levels of hazardous radionuclides such as strontium-90, TEPCO on 27 August 2020 acknowledged for the first time the presence of high levels of carbon-14 in the contaminated tank water

The idea is that the strontium-90, carbon-14, etc can be filtered out, leaving just the tritiated water to be discharged.

Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe

#103

Post by ben_w »

perihelions wrote: post #74
ben_w wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then why not use it as a valuable source of the very expensive and non renewable Helium? Same reason we don’t use nuclear reactors to turn lead into gold, even though we can: it’s far more expensive than it’s worth.

That's actually what we do, in this case: nuclear reactor-derived tritium is the *sole* source of helium-3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Human_production It's *ten* times more expensive than gold! (If I remember correctly, medical ³He MRI's are done on a closed rebreather -- they literally want to recycle your lung air, it's that valuable).

Indeed. I was assuming that the comment I was replying to was referring to helium in general because they were not more specific, and the normal form is ⁴He — we’re not filling party balloons with it.

Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe

#104

Post by Reason077 »

kyrra wrote: post #100
janmalec wrote: post #4

Tritium is already present in the ocean naturally and we are not talking about Nuclear Waste, as the title suggests, but clean water. We also cannot compare the tritium with mercury, because tritium, even if released in the ocean, decays away. Mecury, on the other hand, stays forever. The concerns that the water will affect marine life might be well intended but will cause more harm than good. In the worst possible c…

> People are dying every day due to fossil fuel caused pollution. You don't dive into this in a single sentence, but I do want to raise the point that fossil fuels, while they are bad are better than the alternatives for many countries, especially developing ones. Let's consider some alternatives. Wood and animal waste: for developing nations that need any energy they can get, they will burn these 2, which are massiv…

> "Wood and animal waste"

Also known as biomass. These are a renewable resource and massively better than fossil fuels when it comes to climate change. Obviously you need to ensure they are burnt in a controlled environment (not dumping smoke into people's kitchens, for example), but in the right circumstances they are vastly preferable to coal and gas.

Developing countries need not repeat the same mistakes as the developed world. We have better technology and far more options now.

Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe

#105

Post by pera »

Reason077 wrote: post #102
pera wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tritium is not the only radioactive isotope present though: https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-japan-stateless/20... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/fukushima-reac... > In addition to high levels of hazardous radionuclides such as strontium-90, TEPCO on 27 August 2020 acknowledged for the first time the presence of high levels of carbon-14 in the contaminated tank water

The idea is that the strontium-90, carbon-14, etc can be filtered out, leaving just the tritiated water to be discharged.

According to the article I cited:

> Greenpeace said it had confirmed with Tepco that the system was not designed to remove carbon-14

Maybe there are updates on this matter but I couldn't find anything online.

Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe

#106

Post by Reason077 »

pera wrote: post #105
Reason077 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that the strontium-90, carbon-14, etc can be filtered out, leaving just the tritiated water to be discharged.

According to the article I cited: > Greenpeace said it had confirmed with Tepco that the system was not designed to remove carbon-14 Maybe there are updates on this matter but I couldn't find anything online.

Sounds like you're right about the carbon-14:

"C-14 also cannot be removed by ALPS, but its concentration is far lower than its regulatory standard for discharge."

Source: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi...

Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe

#108

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

The anti-nuclear movement should be regarded as we regard the anti-vax movement.

They both seem to have a standard of zero risk without comparison to the alternatives. (Yes, there are adverse events with vaccines, and even with the risk of those adverse events, they do far more good than harm).

There is overwhelming evidence for safety, but they keep bringing up theoretical risks and point to events in the past (see issues with rotavirus vaccine) to spread FUD. Thins ends up hurting everyone.

Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe

#109

Post by sonicggg »

dikei wrote: post #15

The Japanese have lots of credits on environmental issues: it's one of the cleanest country I've ever seen, so I'm willing to trust them if they say the waste water dumping plan is safe.

Credit on environmental issues? Greenpeace has a very different opinion about it. Japanese are very sketchy about their whale hunting practices.

Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe

#110

Post by pvaldes »

ceejayoz wrote: post #65
pvaldes wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting, thanks. Another silly question. As is known that Tritium is bioaccumulative to the point of probably acting as a persistent organic pollutant, why they don't use biology to concentrate and eventually remove it from the tanks?. Or to keep it safely trapped in the tanks?

> As is known that Tritium is bioaccumulative… What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Health_risks “HTO has a short biological half-life in the human body of 7 to 14 days, which both reduces the total effects of single-incident ingestion and precludes long-term bioaccumulation of HTO from the environment.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22863967/
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