Japan’s fisheries agency said on Saturday fish tested in waters around the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant did not contain detectable levels of the radioactive isotope tritium, Kyodo news service reported.
Japan’s fisheries agency said on Saturday fish tested in waters around the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant did not contain detectable levels of the radioactive isotope tritium, Kyodo news service reported.
Maybe this one act considered independently isn’t that bad. What I don’t like is the “dilution is the solution to pollution” attitude that comes from acceptance of this type of activity.
For tritiated water, it largely is. For other bioaccumulative radio-isotopes it’s not. There’s still potential for concerns. But I think this release is good.
Agreed. Sometimes dilution is the solution.
But, I wouldn’t say this is “good”. I’d rather it not be necessary, but it is, and the relative amount of badness is basically nil.
If the water is fine, why does it have to be released?
Also, would the water from the plant be safe to swim in, or only once it’s diluted with the sea?
Truthfully? I’d swim in the filtered water, but I’m not as concerned with radioactive exposure as others. It’s only a few grams of tritium. Really to be safe you’d need to dilute it more. Tritium is a beta emitter that’s blocked by the skin, so it’s only a problem when it’s absorbed. It’s readily absorbed since it’s water, but it’s also readily released, since it’s water.
I believe it’s because they don’t have the capacity to store it properly anymore. So diluting it and releasing it little by little is what they came up with. It’s not ideal but it’s the least worse solution they have.
Because at the concentration it’s being stored at, it will continue to be dangerous for a long time, and we can’t count on it being contained indefinitely because shit happens, like earthquakes and tsunamis.
All radioactive elements decay. Tritium has a half life of about 12½ years and it turns into ordinary hydrogen. If they keep releasing tritium at the same rate for a long time, it will reach a maximum concentration in about 25 years (or maybe less, depending on how accurate my fuzzy math is). Once it reaches that point, it will decay as fast as it’s released.
It’s also worth noting that if they want to release the tritium at a constant rate, they’ll have to gradually increase the rate at which they release the contaminated water, because the tritium is already decaying in storage.