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

51–60 of 184 posts

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

#51

Post by belter »

janmalec wrote: post #10
jay_kyburz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#52

Post by u320 »

pvaldes wrote: post #42
junon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Water cannot be radioactive To start, seawater has more things than water. Both Hydrogen and Oxygen have isotopes that can decay and emit radioactivity, so yes, water can definitely be radioactive, by definition. For a relatively short time because is not plutonium of course, but it can be. And, unlike Plutonium, the problem is that life beings are mostly made of water and we didn't coevolved with a such rare eleme…

Tritium has a biological half-life in humans of 8 days. It's not a "big danger". Japan has gone out of their way to take all the precautions here, but since it's nuclear you know somebody is going to raise a stink anyway.

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

#53

Post by saalweachter »

contravariant wrote: post #44
janmalec wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well actually, at 1/40 the regulatory tritium limit for drinking water, it is perfectly suitable for any backyard and/or swimming pool.

How did you arrive at that number? Going by one of the comments in this thread it would be 760 TBq of tritium, which would require 76,000,000 m^3 of water to get below the 10 Bg/m^3 limit of the world health organization. (granted I don't know where the 760 TBq figure came from either, I'm just trying to get some clarity)

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.

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

#54

Post by nicoburns »

belter wrote: post #51
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

That seems like an odd request. Something that is safe diluted across an entire ocean may not be safe to drink. In fact, regular seawater isn't all that great for you.

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

#55

Post by contravariant »

saalweachter wrote: post #53
contravariant wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you arrive at that number? Going by one of the comments in this thread it would be 760 TBq of tritium, which would require 76,000,000 m^3 of water to get below the 10 Bg/m^3 limit of the world health organization. (granted I don't know where the 760 TBq figure came from either, I'm just trying to get some clarity)

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.

Ah I see I may have misinterpreted the comment. I took it to mean it should somehow fit in a regular size swimming pool.

As far as I can figure out it probably does not.

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

#56

Post by belter »

nicoburns wrote: post #54
belter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

That seems like an odd request. Something that is safe diluted across an entire ocean may not be safe to drink. In fact, regular seawater isn't all that great for you.

It's the released water not the seawater. That causes vomiting, delirium, and hallucinations :-)

“A Japanese official said it’s okay if you drink this water,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a news briefing. “Then please drink it.”

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

#57

Post by HPsquared »

fsh wrote: post #14
clarionbell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To answer your question. The risk is minimal to nonexistent. Tritium, the thing ONE of the scientists is concerned about, is an isotope of hydrogen. It's barely radioactive, and it has half life of about 12 years. You may know it as the stuff that illuminates watch faces and sights. It's used in many other industrial applications and as far as radioactive elements goes If you read the actual article you may see it's…

Tritium is highly radioactive (358 TBq/g). Otherwise it wouldn't make phosphors glow in the dark.

A high number of decays per second per gram yes (it's a light element with short half-life) so a small amount of mass gives a lot of activity. The total activity of tritium in the stored water is a few hundred TBq (i.e. a few grams of tritium in all those thousands of tonnes of water).

GP was probably referring to the low energy of the decay (18 keV per decay) which is much lower than other common radionuclides found in waste. For example, Cs-137 releases 600 keV per decay, and Sr-90 releases 576 keV followed by 2274 keV. Tritium is a much lower energy decay, per atom.

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

#58

Post by jhugo »

pvaldes wrote: post #47
ramchip wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 15 grams of tritium in total, so it won't generate much helium. Source: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi... [Q6]

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 to the point of probably acting as a persistent organic pollutant

Huh? It has a half-life of 12 years.

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

#59

Post by boomboomsubban »

belter wrote: post #56
nicoburns wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like an odd request. Something that is safe diluted across an entire ocean may not be safe to drink. In fact, regular seawater isn't all that great for you.

It's the released water not the seawater. That causes vomiting, delirium, and hallucinations :-) “A Japanese official said it’s okay if you drink this water,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a news briefing. “Then please drink it.”

The poster you asked is not that Japanese official. They just said dumping it was not a concern. Posting someone else's claim and asking them if they're ready to "back their claim" is disingenuous.

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

#60

Post by jhugo »

Namari wrote: post #24
dikei wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are dumping 1 Million metric tons of water over a period of 30 years. Even if China allow them to dump the water into the Gobi desert, it'd still cost billions of dollar to build and operate the pipeline. It'd never happen.

True but at this point it's not just a Japanese problem but a world wide one, if they dump it in the ocean, it could affect all the life that live there and consequently human life that feeds of it. It reminds me of the WW2 boats that are still in the Oceans leaking toxic products and nobody wants to pay to take them out.

Just to be clear, they are dumping a few grams of a relatively benign element which is regularly & safely discharged into the ocean during the normal operations of nuclear facilities worldwide, diluted in an extremely large volume of seawater.

"it could affect all the life that live there and consequently human life that feeds of it" is not supported by any science, it's just fear, the same fear that leads us to keep running coal power plants that kill people on a daily basis.

Post reply on HN