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

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

#111

Post by titzer »

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…

> Natural gas: one of the best out there. Low emissions

Per BTU heat output, natural gas outputs more than half as much CO2 (about 60%) compared to coal. That's not "low emissions" by any stretch.

Plus, the entire natural gas distribution system is leaky to an extent that is not fully understood yet. Recent reports suggest it is very leaky. Leaking...methane, which is 80-200x worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

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

#112

Post by selectodude »

lordnacho wrote: post #62
janmalec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am a researcher and a Ph.D. student in the field of nuclear reactor physics. I regularly operate and do experiments on a research nuclear reactor. My name is in my hn username and I have no problem defending my claims. I also own a popular TikTok account where I do science communication about nuclear reactors. My information about the water discharge comes from reports by IAEA, who is the authority on the matt…

This reminds me of that Putnam contest comment, a bit of a classic on this forum.

IIRC the guy who started Dropbox offered him a job in that thread too.

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

#113

Post by walnutclosefarm »

ceejayoz wrote: post #86
Aeolun wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yes. But there’s no 5mm of air between tritium you drink and your stomach.

> But there’s no 5mm of air between tritium you drink and your stomach. Correct; it's in liquid, which blocks its radiation even more effectively. The mucous layer in the stomach and intestines will stop it cold. It can't even get past the layer of dead cells that make up our skin.

Notwithstanding your qualifications, this reply is a bit off the mark. The tritium in that vial is indeed no danger, the beta decay of the tritium won't get past the vial itself. Tritium ingested is indeed a danger, however, because once in the body, the water molecules that carry the tritium can and will go anywhere in the body. Most will be excreted in the urine, but some will some will end up in cell nuclei, where their low energy beta decay can and does do real damage to DNA.

Note that I am not arguing that the tritium releases proposed in Japan are dangerous. They are far below any theshold for risk that should concern us. But that's because the concentration is so low, not because ingested tritiated water isn't potentially dangerous.

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

#114

Post by belorn »

dmurray wrote: post #33
junon wrote: post #3

WasteWATER*. I hate when titles leave important things out to make them sound worse than they are. This is about WATER waste.

Well, it's a mixture of water and radioactive isotopes. The million tons of water isn't a danger to the Pacific Ocean, but the stuff it's mixed with may or may not be. If the title had said "a million tons of tritium" it would be wrong, but it didn't.

The information is wrong. The article is talking about waste water that has a total of 2.1 g of pure tritium diluted in 860,000 m3 of stored water.

The legal limit for tritium emissions for a nuclear plant in the US is a total of 0.2kg per year according to NRC. A metric ton is 1000kg. In order to get a million tons you would need 5x10^9 nuclear plants all releasing their maximum amount of tritium. If the amount would then be as diluted as in the article, ie 860,000 tons water for every 2.1 gram, you would then need 4*10^18 tons of water. There isn't enough water on earth to do so.

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

#115

Post by walnutclosefarm »

dmurray wrote: post #33
junon wrote: post #3

WasteWATER*. I hate when titles leave important things out to make them sound worse than they are. This is about WATER waste.

Well, it's a mixture of water and radioactive isotopes. The million tons of water isn't a danger to the Pacific Ocean, but the stuff it's mixed with may or may not be. If the title had said "a million tons of tritium" it would be wrong, but it didn't.

Actually, just to be correct, the tritium in question is not mixed in with the water. It's part of the water.

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

#116

Post by phkahler »

Haha, after the disaster my tongue-in-cheek solution to the mess was just use a small tactical nuke to blow the whole mess into the ocean. Someone said that would put waste into the atmosphere :-(

But hey, they can just drain the water into the ocean right?!?!

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

#117

Post by walnutclosefarm »

junon wrote: post #31
top_sigrid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water which ... is nuclear waste as it is from a nuclear power plant that had a core meltdown? Of course wastewater would have been more specific, but in the end they ARE dumping nuclear waste into the ocean.

Nuclear waterwaste != nuclear waste. Water cannot be radioactive, and in fact water is a fantastic insulator for radiation. The water had contaminates in it and the argument is whether or not the current level of contaminates is safe. The article's title makes it sound like they're just going to dump the Elephant Foot directly into the pacific. It's clearly a sensationalistic anti-nuclear title edit.

In this case, the water is radioactive. They are talking about releasing water in which a small fraction of the molecules are composed of Hydrogen, Tritium and Oxygen (HTO), rather than ordinary H20. HTO acts chemically just like H20, and is literally radioactive water.

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

#118

Post by ceejayoz »

pvaldes wrote: post #110
ceejayoz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/62/4/557/6256015

> Because some people are concerned about biological accumulation of OBT in the environment, we briefly summarize the behavior of OBT in the ecosystem. Scientific data about the environmental behavior of OBT are still limited, however, it is clear that biological accumulation is not the case for tritium including OBT.

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

#120

Post by westcort »

My key takeaways:

1. Scientists: Japan’s Plan To Dump Nuclear Waste Into The Pacific Ocean May Not Be Safe

2. A panel of scientists has identified critical gaps in the data supporting the safe discharge of wastewater into the Pacific

3. Independent scientists are questioning Japan’s plans to dump just over 1 million tons of nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, following a review of the available evidence

4. Last year Japan announced that wastewater from the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, destroyed in March 2011 following the Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami, would be dropped into the Pacific in 2023

5. “So these are all the things we need to consider.” Confusing The Masses The Pacific Islands Forum convened its panel of experts – specializing in policy and different scientific disciplines – because of the highly technical nature of Japan’s plan

6. But panel scientist Robert Richmond, director of the University of Hawaii Kewalo Marine Laboratory, says the panel unanimously believes that critical gaps in information remain

7. Through phytoplankton, Richmond says, the radioactive element could then find its way into the greater food system as the microscopic plants are consumed by mollusks and small fish, which are later consumed by other fish and eventually humans

8. The IAEA is expected to deliver reports from its site visits in the next two months, according to its website, and would release a fully comprehensive report before any water is released

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