Japan to release Fukushima water into ocean starting Aug 24
Japan said on Tuesday it will start releasing more than 1 million metric tonnes of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant on Aug. 24, putting into motion a plan that has drawn strong criticism from China.
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They have to be doing this because of storage and safety costs.
Doesn’t tritium have a half-life of about 12.3 years? If they delayed the release until, say, after approximately 12 more years, surely half of the tritium in a given sample will have decayed.
Yeah, the article is FUD. They're releasing far less than most other reactors release, especially from their neighbor China. It's well below established limits and is highly unlikely to cause any real damage.
From the IAEA:
“Tritium emits weak beta-particles, i.e., electrons, with an average energy of 5.7 keV (kiloelectron-volts), which can penetrate about 6.0 mm of air but cannot penetrate the body through human skin. It may present a radiation hazard if inhaled or ingested but is only harmful to humans in very large doses.”
If a primary producer like phytoplankton is affected, isn’t it likely to impact impact all species that rely on them as a food source?
How about the real concern regarding the question of chronic exposure? If organisms are consistently taking in tritiated water over extended periods, does that constant exposure increases the chances of tritium being incorporated into critical molecules like DNA or proteins? Do we know the likelihood of that leading to long-term biological effects?
Can’t the tritium in tritiated water be incorporated into organic molecules during metabolic reactions? Have we observed the effects of tritium during biosynthesis, where water is a reactant or byproduct? During photosynthesis in phytoplankton, do we know the extent of tritium from tritiated water being incorporated into glucose or other organic molecules?
When marine organisms ingest or absorb tritiated water from their surroundings, it will circulate through their body just like regular water. Since tritiated water behaves chemically like regular water, it would surely be used in all physiological and biochemical processes within the organism.
Do we know the possibility for tritium to become incorporated into marine sediments, especially if it binds with organic matter? Could this create localised hotspots where tritium concentrations are higher than in the surrounding water? If so, won’t benthic organisms (those that live on the ocean floor) be exposed to these at those higher concentrations?
My biggest concern is the possibility of bioaccumulation in the food chain. Granted this would mostly impact small organisms to start, but they would then be consumed by larger predators, and how long before this leads to increased concentrations in apex predators?
I think it’s incredibly foolish for anyone to release water of this nature, Japan or otherwise.
That's a lot of great questions that I hope there are answers to. But from the article:
That water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organisation drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre
So it's about 2% of the limit for drinking water. Assuming there's some correlation between drinking water and ocean water for acquatic life, I think it's reasonable to assume that this is a trivial amount of tritium.
Yes, some aquatic life is likely to be impacted, but whether that amount is actually statistically significant is another question entirely.
Despite assurances, some neighbouring countries have also expressed scepticism over the safety of the plan, with Beijing the biggest critic.
Here's an article where Japan claims China releases many times more tritium than Fukushima will. I don't have access to this article, but if you do, it seems like it should be useful in comparing with the claims in the previous source.
So I think it's a lot of FUD either from China, anti-nuclear power groups, or both. To me, it seems like something that should probably be studied, but not worried about until we actually have reason to believe it's problematic.
It's a lot of tritium, versus baseline. Continental precipitation tritium is ~10 TU, the maximum ocean surface readings at high runoff locations (elevation runoff, not industrial) are ~2TU, most ocean readings are ~0.25 TU.
1 TU = 0.15 Bql
So this is >125x what is found in uncontimanated freshwater, or >625x what is found in the worst measured ocean runoff locations, or ~5,000x average ocean readings, and >8,000x Southern Ocean surface waters.
This is also after all the atomic bomb tests, that added most of the tritium in the environment today. here is a cool paper about using tritium to measure ocean currents that I got most of my data from.
It may be safe for humans, but I don't think you can handwave away potential dangers to aquatic life based off that.
Again, the main opponent here is China, who allegedly puts way more tritium into the water than Japan. So it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
South Korea doesn't seem to have an issue with it, and S. Korea is also an economic rival of Japan. But maybe S. Korea is less affected because of currents, IDK.
So we should definitely study the effects, and I'm sure there are plenty of interested parties doing just that, but we shouldn't be going on the attack until there's actual data pointing out harm. Right now there's mostly FUD, and until that becomes fact (i.e. an adjustment to WHO or a similar body's standards), I think we should monitor it closely but go forward with it.
Just informational.
I haven't done studies on the ocean life where it's being released, nor the currents of where its likely to travel before being diluted. There will very likely be an impact for some sea life, but everything in life has a cost/benefit weight.
I don't think anyone is in a real position to weigh in, unless they personally know the people who did the research and conducted surveys before making the decision. Only because as we have seen time, and time before, capitalism incentivizes scientists to agree with what is best for the economy at best, and an increase to a few people's investment portfolios at worst.
If any of this were true, it still wouldn't matter. The global oceanic ecosystem is already going to collapse in the immediate future, and there is no real world possibility that anything is going to be done to stop it.