[HN Gopher] Japan decides to release water from Fukushima plant ... ___________________________________________________________________ Japan decides to release water from Fukushima plant into sea Author : thread_id Score : 83 points Date : 2021-04-11 21:02 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (asia.nikkei.com) (TXT) w3m dump (asia.nikkei.com) | staticelf wrote: | Japan is a cool country, except stuff like this and their | obsession in killing whales, sharks and dolphins. | TedShiller wrote: | So in other words they just waited until the accident is no | longer in the headlines? | wffurr wrote: | ...isn't this a headline? | kminehart wrote: | Read the article before jumping to conclusions. | 9500 wrote: | 10 years too late if you ask me... | dathinab wrote: | There are some radioactive elements in the water which decay | relatively fast, so waiting a bit before releasing it is a good | idea (and on radioactive scale 10years are just a bit). | samatman wrote: | Good. | | A decade of listening to hippies say the most insane things about | radiation from Fukushima, driven by cynical and breathless media | mendacity, was a real black pill. | | I've said this before: Fukushima was the worst environmental | disaster in human history, because our media landscape amplified | it into something which effectively cut off nuclearization of | baseline power as something which Western nations which aren't | France could do. I don't know precisely how many gigatonnes of | carbon we're talking about but it is, without exaggeration, a | double-digit percentage of the total. It could be gone and it | isn't, and it's because of Fukushima. | | The amount of radiation in that water is utterly dwarfed by | natural potassium. You can use your search engine of choice to | find the graphic, you will laugh. Negligible. | | What isn't negligible is the terror which benefitted _only_ a few | people in journalism who sold some ads with it. The human cost is | immeasurable. Such a shame. | 0xTJ wrote: | I really find it gross the extent to which fear mongering over | nuclear happens. Countries decommissioning nuclear plants to | switch to coal, which kill far more people, even scaling by | use. | | Instead of using a source of power that's overall incredibly | safe, and which produces relatively small amounts of highly | manageable waste, people have pushed to switch to these | incredibly environmentally harmful power sources. This is | especially surprising from countries like Germany that, as | someone who doesn't live anywhere near them, see them as | technically adept. | | My province in Canada got 60% of our power in 2018 from nuclear | (plus 1/4 from hydro), and a different province got 95% of | theirs from hydro, but then that's offset by other provinces | that get 90% of theirs from natural gas and coal. Sure not | every place is ideally suited for a lot of nuclear (though | hopefully SMRs will help), but 90% is too high. | | We need less fossil fuels and more nuclear to bridge the gap to | more renewables. | | For an interesting comparison of the deaths from nuclear | energy, compared to other sources, I highly recommend "How Many | People Did Nuclear Energy Kill? Nuclear Death Toll" [1]. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM | zabzonk wrote: | > Countries decommissioning nuclear plants to switch to coal, | | That won't happen in the UK for political reasons - the | miner's strike and Thatcherism (and vast amounts of | suffering) would be seen to be for nothing. The UK has put a | lot of effort into renewables, and is currently building a | new nuclear station. | dathinab wrote: | > The amount of radiation in that water is utterly dwarfed by | natural potassium. You can use your search engine of choice to | find the graphic, you will laugh. Negligible. | | Only if you instantly perfectly mix all radioactive material | with all the water in the ocean, which won't happen. | | Dumping (liquid) radioactive wast into the sea is common | practice and often allowed due to dilution, but there are _very | strong_ indices that people living close to the dump site (and | potentially not that close) will have noticeable increased | health risk. Because clearly (common sense) it takes time for a | liquid to be diluted and until then it is in a unhealthy | concentration. | | Anyway this is a one-time dump so it's a bit different from | continuously dumping smaller amounts over decades. (Which now | that I think about it Fukushima might be doing since it's | creation anyway...). | ddingus wrote: | Yeah, the core itself is likely to become part of the water | cycle. | | What is the half life? Someone said it was half as | radioactive after a decade. Maybe it can really be a one time | dump. | shoto_io wrote: | Second answer includes: | | _> If I'm completely honest, I'd be perfectly willing to | drink a glass of the water they're planning to dump. I'm | not heading all the way to Japan for it, and I doubt they'd | let me do it anyway, but I'd drink it. Make of that what | you will._ | coldtea wrote: | Conventiently, he wont. Those living nearby will, | however. | shoto_io wrote: | These answers sound almost like they're fabricated... | pjscott wrote: | Close; the half-life of tritium is 12.3 years, at which | point it turns into stable helium-3. | smarx007 wrote: | Notably, the article submitted to HN did not have a single | number inside (well, it did, but "2011" is a year and not | relevant here). Thanks for the pointer, found the infographic | here: https://www.quora.com/Japanese-Prime-Minister-Yoshihide- | Suga... | zabzonk wrote: | > which effectively cut off nuclearization of baseline power as | something which Western nations which aren't France could do | | The UK is currently building a new reactor and considering | building four others. | cassepipe wrote: | I am not myself against nuclear power as a technology but maybe | just maybe it was a _bad_ idea to build a nuclear plant in a | place subject to earthquakes and tsunamis. Can 't blame the | hippies for that one. So instead of blaming people for being | afraid by something as terrifying as radiation, maybe let's | work on making this really safe this time, even safe from man | made mistakes or say, environmental hazards. If you told me | that aeronautics is the safest well understood technology but | each time a plane crash we would have to evacuate the whole | area of a plane crash for at least fifty years, I'd be worried | about planes. | beders wrote: | Minimizing the impact and long term effects of this is | despicable. How dare you spit on the grave of the 1368 people | that died as a direct and indirect consequence? | | Nuclear power is expensive, unreliable and the sooner we get | rid of it, the better. | | Note: that doesn't mean to bring more fossil fuel power plants | online. | | And this baseline myth needs to die. | 0xTJ wrote: | For your benefit, and the benefit of those around you, please | watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM. | elzbardico wrote: | Reality disagrees. By any objective measure, MW per MW I | challenge you to find an energy source able to supply | baseline (not a myth too) with a better safety profile then | nuclear fission. | colordrops wrote: | Yes, hippies, the perennial scapegoats for all our problems. | It's unfortunate how they run energy commissions, governments, | and military organizations around the world, preventing any | progress. | coldtea wrote: | And of course it was hippies who designed this reactor... | | And it was hippies that enabled and encouraged burning coal | and petrol without a care in the world for centuries before | we got nuclear (and after), not engineers... | Black101 wrote: | The BP oil spill[1] in the gulf of Mexico was incredibly bad | too... specially knowing that they let it leak for months... | | And then they used toxic chemicals[2] that were more toxic then | the oil itself to sink the oil to the bottom of the ocean to | hide it all. | | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill | | 2. | https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/en... | | I still avoid BP gas stations whenever I can even if it | probably doesn't help. They bought most gas stations in the | small town I was in at the time, next to the spill. Can't wait | for nuclear & solar power to take over ;) | neolog wrote: | > benefitted only a few people in journalism | | Some competitor industries too. | merb wrote: | > The amount of radiation in that water is utterly dwarfed by | natural potassium. You can use your search engine of choice to | find the graphic, you will laugh. Negligible. | | well there is a lot of sealine, which would disagree if they | could. (they can't of course) it will have tons of impact on | the sealife where the water will be released. it might be even | going ways where we do not know. | | it's basically a tradeoff. release it in the sea and pollute | that or worse it could in some way contain freshwater. it's not | a black pill and such measures should probably taken with care. | | > What isn't negligible is the terror which benefitted only a | few people in journalism who sold some ads with it. The human | cost is immeasurable. | | if only human cost is bad, than I guarantee you that in 10-20 | years you do not want to live on this planet. | | we should never treat such a thing lightly no matter if it will | only pollute 0.00001% of the plants inside the ocean. | ddingus wrote: | The solution to pollution is dilution. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | https://dilbert.com/strip/2003-01-03 | ddingus wrote: | Lolol, I chuckled | koolba wrote: | I say this in my mind every single time I wash my hands. | ddingus wrote: | Interesting take. | | Truth in action. Simple, practical. | saagarjha wrote: | Well, another solution is to not pollute, because at some point | it may not be possible to dilute. | CamperBob2 wrote: | That's not going to happen. We're going to pollute. That's | what we do. So we have to make intelligent decisions about | what we emit, where we emit it, and how much we emit. | ddingus wrote: | It is always possible to dilute. Does not always make sense | though. | | No free lunches here. | | No matter what we do, there are costs and risks. And no | matter what, our nature tends to take us well down a path to | a point of real pain before those costs change behavior too. | | If we valued things differently, we would pollute and manage | things differently, but we don't. | | Maybe one day we will. | | I agree with you, but am just being real about our nature. | trhway wrote: | >The solution to pollution is dilution. | | it has been proven times and times again that such a "solution" | doesn't work. Just an example | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at... | | Similar to the CO2, the issue in this case isn't the polluted | water from one plant. The issue is the practice of dumping of | stuff into the oceans. Allowing such practice to go forward | will quickly lead to the ocean not able to "dilute" anymore to | safe concentration the stuff we'd be dumping into it. | | And on pure economics grounds - why should they be allowed to | externalize their cost (which the dumping is) instead of | bearing it? | wffurr wrote: | Obviously the answer is to make more atmosphere and/or ocean! | trhway wrote: | we have the whole Solar system waiting for our stuff to be | dumped there. | ddingus wrote: | Getting it out is ultra high risk. | Guvante wrote: | Does this have anything to do with radioactive water? | | They aren't dumping radioactive waste, just water that has | become radioactive from being near radioactive waste. | trhway wrote: | >They aren't dumping radioactive waste, just water that has | become radioactive from being near radioactive waste. | | radioactive waste water is radioactive waste. | Guvante wrote: | So you are just using the "technically correct" phrase | designed to make it sound dangerous? | | Dilution amount totally matters in this context. For | instance the EPA limit means if all of your drinking | water was at that limit you would increase the amount of | radiation exposure by 1.3% per year. Would that be | "radioactive waste"? | trhway wrote: | >So you are just using the "technically correct" phrase | designed to make it sound dangerous? | | do you propose to use less technically correct phrase to | make it sound less dangerous? | | >Would that be "radioactive waste"? | | may as well be. The biological impact of getting | radiation sources into your body vs. being just exposed | to it externally is very different (specifically | significantly more severe) in case of alpha and beta | sources. | ddingus wrote: | You mean doesn't always work, right? | | Containment is another option we sometimes have available to | us, when we cannot transform the waste otherwise. | | In general though, dilution is the go to. | | In this scenario, we will end up forced to live with | dilution. Containment is crazy, and the core itself is likely | to end up in the water cycle. Breakdown takes a looooong | time. | dang wrote: | Past related threads, including one from a few days ago: | | _Suga says time ripe to decide fate of Fukushima No.1 water_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739686 - April 2021 (54 | comments) | | _Fukushima: Japan will have to dump radioactive water into | Pacific, minister says_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20925770 - Sept 2019 (30 | comments) | | _Radioactive water at Fukushima Daiichi: What should be done? | (2018)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304208 - June | 2019 (61 comments) | | _No One Knows What to Do with Fukushima's Endless Tanks of | Radioactive Water_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9689554 | - June 2015 (135 comments) | | _Japan nuclear body says radioactive water at Fukushima an | 'emergency'_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6160977 - Aug | 2013 (125 comments) | Causality1 wrote: | Correct decision. The water only contains 0.76 PBq of tritium. | That's only half the radiation US nuclear plants dump every year. | passerby1 wrote: | What's the reason for the US nuclear plants to dump it? | luxuryballs wrote: | I think they are making electricity. | dathinab wrote: | They are allowed to do so, like in so many other countries. | | It turns out dumping liquid radioactive wast into oceans is | fine (law wise, if only radioactive and not otherwise | problematic etc.)...... | egb wrote: | Cringely has some columns about this: | | https://www.cringely.com/2021/03/26/10-years-later-fukushima... | dathinab wrote: | Well a lot of countries did (and some still do) send liquid radio | active wast into the oceans. | | Supposedly it's all fine "because it get's diluted enough". | | But guess what, increased health issues of people "close" to the | place it gets released clearly show that this isn't really the | case. At least for the people close by. | | But then it might be true on the bug picture and it just needs | time to be diluted, in which case a one-time release (instead of | continual ones I'm speaking about) might be fine. | | More importantly is to learn from all the problems which made the | catastrophe worse. A recurring theme is "known" problems not have | been known by the people operating it (i.e. they didn't reach | them) and emergency plans having gaps. | | So like always it's more a human then a technical problem. | | But then human problems _always_ happen. | jshmrsn wrote: | "But guess what, increased health issues of people "close" to | the place it gets released clearly show that this isn't really | the case. At least for the people close by." | | Do you have a link/source for this? | Animats wrote: | Well, it's been 10 years, so tritium is half as radioactive now. | kenned3 wrote: | It is equally radioactive as it was 10 years ago, but now there | is half of it left. | | While i am very supportive of nuclear power, this idea of half- | life seems misunderstood. what remains is just as | radioactive... Just now there is less of it. | t8e56vd4ih wrote: | I'm pretty sure intensity is proportional to "what's left". | ascar wrote: | If there are half as many radioactive isotopes left then the | material is also half as radioactive, as radioactivity is | measured in decays per second (Becquerel [1]). | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel | forgetfulness wrote: | It doesn't say how they're going to release it though. Are they | just going to flush it by the shore? Wouldn't you want to | actually spread it out as much as possible and as far away as you | can, rather than have it concentrated right next to where you and | lots of fauna live? | pm90 wrote: | From the article: | | > The following month, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, | the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, drafted a plan to | dilute the water to below the legal limit for concentration of | radioactive materials before releasing it in the sea. | | Presumably that's safe to dump into the sea shore when it's | that diluted. | freetime2 wrote: | Yup and will further dilute by orders of magnitude once | released into the open ocean. | ghodith wrote: | Can anyone explain to me why this would be preferred over the | alternative they mention in the article of evaporating the water? | etiam wrote: | Not sure how much it matters for the difference in risks after | dilution, but beta radiation probably has short reach in water | compared to air. | | From the perspective of the people releasing the radioactive | water, evaporating it would give them larger volumes of a | material that is more difficult to manage before it disperses | and in medium where more of the radiation reaches further. | | Seems like the main environmental concern ought to be | absorption into tissues though, and it's not at all clear to me | that highly active marine ecosystems with long food chains is | the preferable alternative there. | kenned3 wrote: | you would need a tritium refinement plant, like what we have in | Ontario. | | Tritium is also produced in heavy water-moderated reactors | whenever a deuterium nucleus captures a neutron. This reaction | has a quite small absorption cross section, making heavy water | a good neutron moderator, and relatively little tritium is | produced. Even so, cleaning tritium from the moderator may be | desirable after several years to reduce the risk of its | escaping to the environment. Ontario Power Generation's | "Tritium Removal Facility" processes up to 2,500 tonnes (2,500 | long tons; 2,800 short tons) of heavy water a year, and it | separates out about 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) of tritium, making it | available for other uses.[13] | | you dont really want to just "evaporate the water" but | "distill" it, same as making alcohol... the boiling points are | very close and it is expensive to process that much water. | garmaine wrote: | The radioactive water still goes somewhere. Would you rather it | go into the ocean or into our lungs and crops? | busymom0 wrote: | I am uneducated at the science behind it but wouldn't | evaporating method only result in the water being evaporated | and not the "radioactive stuff" in it? Similar to how Bear | Gryls would evaporate urine to make clean drinkable water. | DuskStar wrote: | The radioactive stuff is still chemically water. | asymmetric wrote: | You seem to imply the ocean is a clearly better option -- I'm | not sure it is? Harm will come to us and other animals either | way, the extent seems a bit hard to assess and depends highly | on what one values. | eganist wrote: | The water can stop beta particles far more effectively than | the air (2in v. 10ft), which minimizes the risk to life | forms save for those which directly interact with tritium | water, but even then, there's far more water in the ocean | for tritium water to dilute into. In the air, the water | will still get invariably pulled into the water cycle, | wherein it condenses into rain, enters streams and lakes, | plants, life, etc. where it can't as effectively dilute. | | Would love for a nuclear or environmental researcher to | fact-check me here. I'm out of my depth. I'm just applying | the trivia that I know. | skrause wrote: | This "what if" xkcd is somewhat relevant: https://what- | if.xkcd.com/74/ | | The _vast_ majority of water molecules in the oceans have | never been drunk by any human ever. | rnhmjoj wrote: | I'm just a physics student by incidentally I'm | researching tritium right now. Tritium is one of the | least toxic radionuclide because the b radiation it emits | is very low energy, also the biological half life is only | 10 days (it means it's quickly eliminated by the body): | unless you ingest very large quantities of it, you're | probably going to be fine. In fact, the range of the | electrons is even less than you quote: around 5 mm in air | and 6 mm in water, which means it's effectively stopped | by the dead skin layer. If I were to decide, I would | probably pick dilution in water over vaporisation. | eganist wrote: | > around 5 mm in air and 6 mm in water | | Interesting. My source re: beta radiation was (admittedly | a nuclear promotion nonprofit) | http://nuclearconnect.org/know-nuclear/science/protecting | | > b BETA - can only be stopped after traveling through | about 10 feet of air, less than 2 inches of water, or a | thin layer of glass or metal. Additional covering, for | example heavy clothing, is necessary to protect against | beta-emitters. Some beta particles can penetrate and burn | the skin. | | I won't be surprised if you're right, but if a nonprofit | getting government grants to promote the nuclear industry | gets it wrong, I'd be pretty worried. | ddingus wrote: | Harm was going to come to us, post event, no matter what. | | Some argue we are not good enough at these things, meaning | harm will come to us every time we generate energy this | way. The only real question being us or future people, near | or longer term harm. | | Say we set that aside as a matter of ambiguity and just | focus on type of harm. (My own take is we will generate | energy this way, so we may as well fund serious risk | mitigation of all kinds.) | | We have only one option here longer term, and that is | dilution. | | Normally, we have two, the other being containment. (And, | given we do make energy this way, strong investment in | containment makes a lot of sense.) | | And in this scenario, we have both contaminated water to | deal with and a core likely to enter the water cycle itself | at some point too. It will, at that time, irradiate water | for a long time. | | Is the harm in the atmosphere greater than in water? | | It will go somewhere. IMHO, the water is a better shield | and has far greater capacity to serve as a medium to dilute | in than the air does. | 1cvmask wrote: | Which marine products are they referring to: | | The government had initially hoped to make a decision on the | discharge of the treated water in October last year but later | decided it would need more time for discussions amid staunch | concern about reputational damage to marine products. | toomuchtodo wrote: | Seafood for domestic and international consumption. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-11 23:00 UTC)