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Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe
121–130 of 184 posts
Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe
#122No post body was provided.
Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe
#123Here we go again the never endless war against the safest and greenest source of energy ever invented: nuclear power.
Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe
#124Tritium 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…
Thank you for saying that, I still don't get how so many people who claim to take decision based on science are so against nuclear tech.
Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe
#125The quantity of Tritium in the water of concern is 760 TBq. This is not a huge amount; if the accident had not occurred the plant would have discharged more than that amount into the ocean over the years since during its normal operation.
15 grammes of tritium in 1,000,000 tons of water Sounds a lot better than 760 trillion berequel of tritium in 1,000,000 tons of water.
From what I can read, 1 gram of tritium is 358 trillion berequel. Thus, 760 trillion berequel of tritium would be a total of 2.1 grams.
Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Credentialism and appeals. To authority to silence dissent are disgusting anti-scientific mistakes that plague our society. Source: I’m a dropout and frequently encounter highly educated idiots
But what's the alternative? You want any random idiot to have a voice? I'd assume there are more un-educated idiots than educated ones - your personal issue is not getting the credential to prove your worth.
Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe
#127Tritium 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…
Thank you for saying that, I still don't get how so many people who claim to take decision based on science are so against nuclear tech.
Well, one reason is that a lot of people casually assume that the baseline level of radiation in the natural environment is 0.0000000...., but it's not.
Uranium has been extracted from seawater before. It's not economically practical, but it can be done, because seawater has uranium in it already. Tritium is also already in there.
Issues of concentration at the point where it is put into the ocean can be an issue, but once dispersed this won't turn the pristine, 0.0000000...% radioactive ocean into a radioactive hellscape, it represents an impercetible percentage increase of what is already there. That doesn't mean we shouldn't think about the implications, but "thinking about the implications" shouldn't start from incorrect understandings of the nature of the current world.
Earth is an amazing environment. It does an incredible job of giving us a low-radiation environment, compared to most of the rest of the universe which ranges from "dangerous" to "radioactive wasteland". But it's not perfect and we are not at a flat 0 even here.
Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
But keep in mind methane's halflife is 'only' ~8 years.
Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe
#129Tritium is regularly discharged from multiple countries. https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi... The entire pdf is a worthy read.
To note, one of groups like Greenpeace’s argument is that gov. and TEPCO are straight bullshitting the waste water composition [0]
It usually would fall in conspiracy theory territory, expect TEPCO did bullshit their facts and numbers at several critical occasions already, and the gov stays in lockstep with TEPCO.
[0] https://www.greenpeace.org/japan/sustainable/story/2019/07/2...
Re: Japan’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the pacific ocean may not be safe
#130Better article here from the experts at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/whats-wrong-with-japans-anti...
The issue is not so much tritium, but rather that claims of removal of some 60+ other radionuclides (products of fission of uranium) to below regulatory standards remain questionable.
> "TEPCO and the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry have acknowledged that more than 70 percent of the treated water at Fukushima contains 62 other nuclides that are higher than regulatory standards. Therefore, treated water may pose significant risks to the environment and public health and could damage Fukushima’s fishing and agricultural industry. The environmental, social, and economic impacts of releasing the treated water to the sea must be more carefully assessed."