Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

civilbeat.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 184 posts

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

#171

Post by adhesive_wombat »

ceejayoz wrote: post #148
pvaldes wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A factory worker ingested tritium over 7.4 years. His exposure dose was estimated at 3–6 Sv. He developed isochromic anemia, and subsequently died of pancytopenia"

Eating tritium straight from the factory for years at a time seems like a special case, yes? Yes, you can beat the biological half-life if you eat whopping doses of the stuff. That's... not a common situation. If you ate said factory worker, you'd be back to normal in a couple weeks, as long as you didn't keep eating factory workers.

At a dose factor of 0.000018 mSv/kBq for tritiated water, you would get a 3 Sv dose from "only" 1/5000 of the water.

Drinking (or inhaling) 50,000 gallons of the (undiluted, so best case in terms of volume) water from storage tanks would probably get you with kidney failure somewhat before the tritium does.

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

#172

Post by belter »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #156
belter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that, and I would imagine everybody else in this thread. That was why, to try to avoid sounding disingenuous, I tried to apologize upfront for the question, and recognized and appreciated the poster qualifications. I was trying to qualify what safe means in this context. A bit like when talking for example to an aircraft manufacturer CEO, for example as in: 1) "This new airplane model is perfectly safe to f…

Your method of asking was very confrontational, even if you did start it politely. You challenged them to "back your claim" which wasn't their claim. You could have asked something like "do you agree with the Japanese claim that the water is safe to drink? Would you be willing to drink it?"

Reading it again, I can see how it could seem that way, although none of that was on my mind.

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

#173

Post by morninglight »

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.

Minamata Disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease

-

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

#176

Post by Aeolun »

belorn wrote: post #125
Aeolun wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you can adjust either side of that statement to fit, and not change anything about the point I was trying to make :)

I just copied the numbers I saw elsewhere in this thread.

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

#177

Post by forty »

DennisP wrote: post #146
teawrecks wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tritium is already present in the ocean Would that be like saying "carbon dioxide is already present in the atmosphere"?

We've increased the atmosphere's CO2 concentration by 50%. A few grams of tritium won't significantly change its concentration in the ocean.

Is that true locally though?

There is sure a lot of water in the ocean, but it's still possible to poison stuff locally, wherever you drop the stuff is going to have higher concentration, at least for a short while.

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

#178

Post by forty »

yandrypozo wrote: post #124
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…

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.

Nuclear is like a religious thing. No one is actually looking at facts and science, they just have belief that this is a solution or the problem. Look how conclusions from an expert panel are shrugged at as "nuclear is obviously the only right solution", no one cares whether those conclusion are based on science or not.

Personally I don't disagree that nuclear is probably needed at least short term, but it's not a a reason to ignore or deny the problems it causes, some of them are hard to solve, and probably some also even hard to anticipate.

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

#179

Post by madsbuch »

Archelaos wrote: post #101
janmalec wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this comment very well encompasses the modern discourse on sustainability: With a complete lack of a principle of proportionality.

The problem by elevating the seriousness of flushing a toilet, is that it dilutes more severe cases where one could do an actual impact.

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

#180

Post by yreg »

forty wrote: post #177
DennisP wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've increased the atmosphere's CO2 concentration by 50%. A few grams of tritium won't significantly change its concentration in the ocean.

Is that true locally though? There is sure a lot of water in the ocean, but it's still possible to poison stuff locally, wherever you drop the stuff is going to have higher concentration, at least for a short while.

Another commenter down the thread:

>The process for releasing typically dilutes to a standard level before releasing into the ocean/ other water way. So when it's released, it's already at a level you could swim in (drink?), there's no process for it accumulating into a more concentrated form in the ocean, and it has a half-life of 12 years.

Post reply on HN