4 ms·

Is there actual risk here? I see the key phrase "reputational damage". Seeing how much uranium is already dissolved in the oceans, I think this is probably far

Is there actual risk here? I see the key phrase "reputational damage". Seeing how much uranium is already dissolved in the oceans, I think this is probably far less bad than e.g. micro-plastics.

lainga 6y ago
Yes, reputational damage - see other comments below - if HN cannot understand the plan neither will the general public
jillesvangurp 6y ago
If everyone starts dumping their nuclear waste like this, then yes. Which is why this not cool and Japan should do the right thing and just pay for solving this properly and responsibly. They took on the moral responsibility to do that when they started planning to build the reactor. Tough luck it didn't work out for them with getting some electricity on the cheap. Just bad luck or bad planning (leaning towards the latter). Nuclear waste is inconvenient because handling it properly is very costly and as soon as you start accounting for that, nuclear stops being cheap. Or put differently, it's only cheap if you make the waste somebody else's problem. Not unlike people's tail emissions from their cars are somehow not their problem but we all get to enjoy the effects of global warming. It's more a question of "can Japan get away with just dumping nuclear waste in international waters?". Answer: yes of course they can. People will whine a bit but nobody is going to do much more than that. Probably some marine life will be affected. And there's a chance that shows up in our food chain. (Japanese love sushi, just saying). But the Pacific is a big place so the chance of that is not super high. Or it happens in a few hundred years when that crap is still radioactive. By then it's the problem of a few generations after us. We might simply call that bad luck and claim that will not have a measurable effect. A few people dying in the future would be hard to measure or connect to this specific event. That doesn't mean it won't happen but just that you have plausible deniability. People confuse that with "it's fine". Depends if we are talking legalities here or moral responsibility.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > If everyone starts dumping their nuclear waste like this This sounds weird, but I feel like Japan almost earned this privilege when it had a reactor by the ocean melt down.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    I agree. I am not worried about perverse incentive to let your reactors melt down so you can dump the waste, because these are highly public events that cause much outcry no matter how the waste is disposed.
kalnins 6y ago
According to METI[1] on summer 2019, there where 1.1*10^9 L of contaminated water with radiation of "≦a few hundred Bq/L". Assuming 200, we get 0.22 TBq of radiation in total. In comparison, based on reports of US Nuclear regulatory Comission, US reactors in 2003 dumped more than 1.50 PBq of tritium[2]. To me, the "less then few hundred Bq/L" seems a bit low, but I could not find any other sources. Edit: This [3] reports that total tritium is about 860 TBq, so, apparently, I just don't understand correctly the "few hundred Bq/L" part. This would translate to 716667 Bq/L or ~ 12 times the Japans drinkable water limit. [1] https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20190904_current_status.pdf https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Environmental_contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Environmental_contamin... [3] https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20200203_current_status.pdf https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi...

Is there actual risk here? I see the key phrase "reputational damage". Seeing how much uranium is already dissolved in the oceans, I think this is probably far less bad than e.g. micro-plastics.

lainga 6y ago

Yes, reputational damage - see other comments below - if HN cannot understand the plan neither will the general public

jillesvangurp 6y ago

If everyone starts dumping their nuclear waste like this, then yes. Which is why this not cool and Japan should do the right thing and just pay for solving this properly and responsibly. They took on the moral responsibility to do that when they started planning to build the reactor. Tough luck it didn't work out for them with getting some electricity on the cheap. Just bad luck or bad planning (leaning towards the latter). Nuclear waste is inconvenient because handling it properly is very costly and as soon as you start accounting for that, nuclear stops being cheap. Or put differently, it's only cheap if you make the waste somebody else's problem. Not unlike people's tail emissions from their cars are somehow not their problem but we all get to enjoy the effects of global warming. It's more a question of "can Japan get away with just dumping nuclear waste in international waters?". Answer: yes of course they can. People will whine a bit but nobody is going to do much more than that. Probably some marine life will be affected. And there's a chance that shows up in our food chain. (Japanese love sushi, just saying). But the Pacific is a big place so the chance of that is not super high. Or it happens in a few hundred years when that crap is still radioactive. By then it's the problem of a few generations after us. We might simply call that bad luck and claim that will not have a measurable effect. A few people dying in the future would be hard to measure or connect to this specific event. That doesn't mean it won't happen but just that you have plausible deniability. People confuse that with "it's fine". Depends if we are talking legalities here or moral responsibility.

dehrmann 6y ago
> If everyone starts dumping their nuclear waste like this This sounds weird, but I feel like Japan almost earned this privilege when it had a reactor by the ocean melt down.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  I agree. I am not worried about perverse incentive to let your reactors melt down so you can dump the waste, because these are highly public events that cause much outcry no matter how the waste is disposed.

kalnins 6y ago

According to METI[1] on summer 2019, there where 1.1*10^9 L of contaminated water with radiation of "≦a few hundred Bq/L". Assuming 200, we get 0.22 TBq of radiation in total. In comparison, based on reports of US Nuclear regulatory Comission, US reactors in 2003 dumped more than 1.50 PBq of tritium[2]. To me, the "less then few hundred Bq/L" seems a bit low, but I could not find any other sources. Edit: This [3] reports that total tritium is about 860 TBq, so, apparently, I just don't understand correctly the "few hundred Bq/L" part. This would translate to 716667 Bq/L or ~ 12 times the Japans drinkable water limit. [1] https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20190904_current_status.pdf https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Environmental_contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Environmental_contamin... [3] https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20200203_current_status.pdf https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi...