6 ms·

It’s Tritium aka Hydrogen with two neutrons which is part of any water anyway and even part of the human body. Even if they release all of the Tritium water, t

It’s Tritium aka Hydrogen with two neutrons which is part of any water anyway and even part of the human body. Even if they release all of the Tritium water, they will not even cause a minuscule bump in the Tritium concentration of the ocean. Plus, Tritium is a beta emitter and the particles have a range of merely a few micrometers. Releasing that Tritium has never been a health or environmental problem, it has merely been a PR and political problem.

Retric 6y ago
Tritium isn’t in normal water at any appreciable quantities, your probably thinking of Deuterium. Tritium’s has a half life is only 12.32 years and is very light weight making it surprisingly deadly per kg. Releasing this quantity sufficiently far off shore is a minimal health hazard, but the stuff is a serious health hazard that needs to be handled appropriately. That said, it’s also worth 30,000$/gram so it’s generally only a problem at very low concentrations.
- aeternum 6y ago
  Is it not possible to concentrate it via centrifuge or distillation?
  - Retric 6y ago
    Physically possible but not economically viable, it’s ~3 grams of tritium out of ~1,000,000,000,000 grams of water.
- hilbert42 6y ago
  Same rhetorical question here. At that price, it would seem it's worth concentrating it, so why not? Of course, that would depend on the average concentrations in the holding tanks, so I consulted the source of much knowledge and it has an answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium (go to Fukushima Daiichi). "<...>the Tritiated Water Task Force released a report on the status of tritium in tritiated water at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant<...>. [In 2016] <...> holding of tritium on-site was 760 TBq (equivalent to 2.1 g of tritium or 14 mL of pure tritiated water) in a total of 860,000 m3 of stored water. This report also identified the reducing concentration of tritium in the water extracted from the buildings etc. for storage, seeing a factor of ten decrease over the five years considered (2011–2016), 3.3 MBq/L to 0.3 MBq/L (after correction for the 5% annual decay of tritium)." That report is here: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20160915_01a.pdf https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi... Now draw your own conclusions.
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crazypython 6y ago
Hmmm, so would you drink Tritium water? Could they have diluted it and sold it as Tritium premium homeopathy water?
- User23 6y ago
  This is the great thing about homeopathy. Water from any major metropolitan area has homeopathic levels of any drug you're liable to think of. So just drink tap water and all your illnesses will be cured!
  - m463 6y ago
    And if you dilute that it will get more potent.
- BelenusMordred 6y ago
  I wouldn't ingest it but do carry around a tritium keyring every day. It's been glowing non-stop for years now and probably has another decade or two left in it.
01100011 6y ago
> Tritium is a beta emitter and the particles have a range of merely a few micrometers Which is very significant if the tritium is incorporated into your cells.
XorNot 6y ago
Most of the deaths of fire fighters who responded to Chernobyl were not from radiation sickness. They were from bacterial sepsis from severe skin burns from beta emitters ("beta burns") due to having a layer of radioactive dust on their protective jackets and wearing them for hours after exposure. A "few millimetres" of skin or any tissue is a massive wound path, particularly over a large area of something like skin, and it presents as a "burn" with the same treatment profile as any other. Beta emitters are by far one of the most dangerous radioactive risks - precisely because they're incredibly not dangerous under fairly minor control conditions, but rapidly lethal if you're contaminated in the wrong way. This is probably a completely safe way to deal with this material ultimately, considering dilution, but it's important to be very clear on why. Beta emitters are very dangerous under the right circumstances, more so then gamma.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  Would be realistic to expect more stomach or gut cancer in people eating sea products? Some edible things living in sea bottom filter tirelessly. Would it concentrate the tritium?
- rnhmjoj 6y ago
  The power density of the tritium due to the deposition of energy by the β radiation (electrons) is 325W/kg. Assuming the entirety of the tritiated water (2.1g) they're dumping is concentrated to a droplet and you're holding that in your hand, it will give off 0.7W, so to warm you body by 1°C you would halve to hold it for a week. That said, tritium is dangerous, but its β radiation won't burn your skin. Ingesting large quantities of it, 10-20 times the annual limit of intake, can cause immediate issues like white cells death and increase chances of developing cancer by around 1%.
  - XorNot 6y ago
    I agree the quantity is very minimal, and dilution will work - but the thrust of my post was opposing the description of how easy Beta-radiation is to stop (via how much skin it penetrates) - because that skin penetration is exactly why it's dangerous. It's not IR and the rules are very different. Beta-emitters aren't dumping that energy into thermal heating, they're dumping it into the interior of your cells as a high energy electron or positron. Wherever that thing appears, it's quite likely to blow a hole through whatever substructure happens to catch it, which means despite being low overall energy, the delivery mechanism is quite different. The reason I quoted "beta burns" is because they act like burns, but they're not thermal. They're the result of cell death happening in deep layers of the skin (or your internal membranes if you ingest/breathe it). It's just the effect is quite similar: cell death in relatively deep skin layers, and the side-effects - susceptibility to infection.
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Retric 6y ago

Tritium isn’t in normal water at any appreciable quantities, your probably thinking of Deuterium. Tritium’s has a half life is only 12.32 years and is very light weight making it surprisingly deadly per kg. Releasing this quantity sufficiently far off shore is a minimal health hazard, but the stuff is a serious health hazard that needs to be handled appropriately. That said, it’s also worth 30,000$/gram so it’s generally only a problem at very low concentrations.

aeternum 6y ago
Is it not possible to concentrate it via centrifuge or distillation?
- Retric 6y ago
  Physically possible but not economically viable, it’s ~3 grams of tritium out of ~1,000,000,000,000 grams of water.
hilbert42 6y ago
Same rhetorical question here. At that price, it would seem it's worth concentrating it, so why not? Of course, that would depend on the average concentrations in the holding tanks, so I consulted the source of much knowledge and it has an answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium (go to Fukushima Daiichi). "<...>the Tritiated Water Task Force released a report on the status of tritium in tritiated water at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant<...>. [In 2016] <...> holding of tritium on-site was 760 TBq (equivalent to 2.1 g of tritium or 14 mL of pure tritiated water) in a total of 860,000 m3 of stored water. This report also identified the reducing concentration of tritium in the water extracted from the buildings etc. for storage, seeing a factor of ten decrease over the five years considered (2011–2016), 3.3 MBq/L to 0.3 MBq/L (after correction for the 5% annual decay of tritium)." That report is here: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20160915_01a.pdf https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi... Now draw your own conclusions.
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crazypython 6y ago

Hmmm, so would you drink Tritium water? Could they have diluted it and sold it as Tritium premium homeopathy water?

User23 6y ago
This is the great thing about homeopathy. Water from any major metropolitan area has homeopathic levels of any drug you're liable to think of. So just drink tap water and all your illnesses will be cured!
- m463 6y ago
  And if you dilute that it will get more potent.
BelenusMordred 6y ago
I wouldn't ingest it but do carry around a tritium keyring every day. It's been glowing non-stop for years now and probably has another decade or two left in it.

01100011 6y ago

> Tritium is a beta emitter and the particles have a range of merely a few micrometers Which is very significant if the tritium is incorporated into your cells.

XorNot 6y ago

Most of the deaths of fire fighters who responded to Chernobyl were not from radiation sickness. They were from bacterial sepsis from severe skin burns from beta emitters ("beta burns") due to having a layer of radioactive dust on their protective jackets and wearing them for hours after exposure. A "few millimetres" of skin or any tissue is a massive wound path, particularly over a large area of something like skin, and it presents as a "burn" with the same treatment profile as any other. Beta emitters are by far one of the most dangerous radioactive risks - precisely because they're incredibly not dangerous under fairly minor control conditions, but rapidly lethal if you're contaminated in the wrong way. This is probably a completely safe way to deal with this material ultimately, considering dilution, but it's important to be very clear on why. Beta emitters are very dangerous under the right circumstances, more so then gamma.

pvaldes 6y ago
Would be realistic to expect more stomach or gut cancer in people eating sea products? Some edible things living in sea bottom filter tirelessly. Would it concentrate the tritium?
rnhmjoj 6y ago
The power density of the tritium due to the deposition of energy by the β radiation (electrons) is 325W/kg. Assuming the entirety of the tritiated water (2.1g) they're dumping is concentrated to a droplet and you're holding that in your hand, it will give off 0.7W, so to warm you body by 1°C you would halve to hold it for a week. That said, tritium is dangerous, but its β radiation won't burn your skin. Ingesting large quantities of it, 10-20 times the annual limit of intake, can cause immediate issues like white cells death and increase chances of developing cancer by around 1%.
- XorNot 6y ago
  I agree the quantity is very minimal, and dilution will work - but the thrust of my post was opposing the description of how easy Beta-radiation is to stop (via how much skin it penetrates) - because that skin penetration is exactly why it's dangerous. It's not IR and the rules are very different. Beta-emitters aren't dumping that energy into thermal heating, they're dumping it into the interior of your cells as a high energy electron or positron. Wherever that thing appears, it's quite likely to blow a hole through whatever substructure happens to catch it, which means despite being low overall energy, the delivery mechanism is quite different. The reason I quoted "beta burns" is because they act like burns, but they're not thermal. They're the result of cell death happening in deep layers of the skin (or your internal membranes if you ingest/breathe it). It's just the effect is quite similar: cell death in relatively deep skin layers, and the side-effects - susceptibility to infection.

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