> Japan says all radioactive elements have been filtered out except tritium, which is hard to remove from water. The hydrogen isotope is also discharged – at higher levels – by operational nuclear power plants, including in China and France. > That water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organization drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre, according to Tepco.…
You're drawing some arbituary point of even more negligible dilution when mathematically, flat out dumping everything straight into Inawashiro is still merely 1% of WHO limit for safe drinking water. It would already be adequately diluted for human health. It's already likely sufficiently negligible considering the ratio of solution:solvent. Spread that over 30/50 or whatever years over water cycles and different loc…
So I agree with your point that it would be heavily opposed by local residents if they tried to dump it in a lake. And yes an elected government is going to be more concerned with keeping their voters happy than than their neighbors who are engaged in opportunistic political posturing. But I don't think this is unique to Japan at all. Look at the pushback that the US got when they tried to bury spent nuclear waste in…
>perplexing that you are so fixated
It was just a retort to OP comment of regional reaction to JP release being geopolitics at it's worst when incentive calculus points to decision to release being JP domestic politics at it's worst (even if it's also politically optimal/expedient). As far as being in room, I don't see how that's relevant. All we have is what has been publicly communicated and it was between aerial release and water, both of which = release into commons, what solution makes to public discourse is as important as what doesn't - the numbers released so far suggest domestic storage/disposal was feasible, but again, that's a politically non-starter. I find it perplexing people can judge what's optimal/suboptimal based on science when this is predominantly a political issue due to domestic and regional trust of TEPCO. The fundmental issue is people, including japanese does not trust TEPCO even with oversight to behave correctly long term. So the politically expedient thing for JP politics to do is dump in commons to avoid potential domestic blowback, because local storage not politically viable option. And natural regional geopolitical response to that would be fishing bans because JP made a potential domestic problem a regional one. How optimal the solution is a function of politics/incentives. In this case one that involves radiation that sensible geopolitical response would be to keep that shit in your borders regardless of cost. Yucca mountain fine example, it's a fucking shitshow but it's still US at least keeping their nuclear waste on domestic soil, it's US gov eating the cost, as they should. But IIT we have useful idiots whose like, punishing said dick move is geopolitics at it's worst.
You're drawing some arbituary point of even more negligible dilution when mathematically, flat out dumping everything straight into Inawashiro is still merely 1% of WHO limit for safe drinking water. It would already be adequately diluted for human health. It's already likely sufficiently negligible considering the ratio of solution:solvent. Spread that over 30/50 or whatever years over water cycles and different loc…
It's not arbitrary, and I don't understand why you think it is. It's not even a mathematical issue. At it's core, it has always been an environmental issue. Fundamentally, the complaint is that the tritium water will cause environmental damage. => And will lead to damage to humans. If we go down to the roots of the issue, it has not, and never was centered around whether the bq/L was below human drinking limits. It h…
No, I'm highlighting professionals, ESPECIALLY policy makers, are politically constrained in what they can recommend/advocate. They are more compromised by default. I'm aware of the release by air solution, and it reinforces my fact that domestic storage/disposal, though expensive, was likely never properly considered, not because of science or viability, but because domestic politics forbids it. Fundamentally, the problem is one of (geo)political trust. No one trusts TEPCO not to fuck up regardless of oversight, hence the actual science is _politically_ irrelevant. When that's the trust baseline, the region would prefer Japan to keep their domestic nuclear mess up as a domestic problem, within their borders either via domestic storage or disposal. JP political incentive is the opposite, they'd rather dump it off into commons to prevent blowback citing good science, when good science is irrelevant because it can be trivially invalidated by conspiracy/coverup, which TEPCO+JP politics name a more iconic duo. Good science isn't causing SKR/PRC residents to panic and stock up salt or reduce fish consumption if JP fish isn't banned to reduce perception of contamination risk. JP politicians did what's optimal/expedient for them and constituents - offload a literal radioactive problem into regional geopolitics. Which is... fine, even if dick move because one would expect wealthy countries with capability to keep these problems domestic despite cost. The original response to OP was to point out that JP domestic politics at its worst is what’s driving regional geopolitics, which is not responding in a vacuum, and political responses not constrained by science, because science is not sufficient without political trust.