4 ms·

No, it's not distributed world wide evenly in all oceans

• arcticbull 6y ago
  Certainly will get there in time :) unless they're planning to contain it in little aquariums.
  • pvaldes 6y ago
    Certainly not. The ocean is a little more complex than a glass of water. The solution to this problem will came in the hands of science or will not happen. If we dismiss even the most basic science or use that time to make silly jokes instead, we will enjoy a brutal wake up call and return to reality when our flamboyant plans backfire. And they will do. The entire planet will be very disappointed with Japan if they finally do that. Their public image as a modern country will suffer, for sure.
    • arcticbull 6y ago
      Sorry, are you suggesting that something like tritium (which is in this case, tritiated water, T2O) wouldn't dissolve and disperse across the ocean?
      • pvaldes 6y ago
        I'm suggesting exactly that, yes. Can't happen.
        • arcticbull 6y ago
          [citation needed]
          • pvaldes 6y ago
            pvaldes said that in 2021 Don't expect simple answers to complex problems. Citation without understanding is just appealing to authority complex. A scientific fact is true even if there is not still a monograph available reviewing all knowledge in that field. (Something much more common that people think). The alternative would be citing thousands of articles and spending many hours creating the review for you. This is not the place for that and I will not do it for free, so please stop the bullshit of weaponizing citations as a strategy to stop the debate by drowning the readers in academic molasses. Now returning to the theme... What you claim is that something dumped in the sea will dilute and disperse homogeneously because "X" liters of sea water and the mantra "contamination plus dilution easy peasy". I can assure you that this shouldn't be token for granted in the real life. Some stuff will mix, other will behave in a different way. An example. Salt in a glass water will dilute for a while but its behavior will suddenly change after reaching some concentration. Another example, If we dump a truckload of cannon balls in water, will they dilute and disperse?. Not. They will accumulate in the bottom, using just a small part of the water volume and remaining in the same location. And in absence of external forces can remain in the same place for basically "forever" rusting at a glacially slow pace for thousands of years. Radioactive metals will act in the same way when dumped in the sea. We don't need a citation to understand than anything heavier than water will tend to sink, and tritium is heavier. Therefore in absence of other forces Tritium will sink until reaching a layer of its same density. But not further, because salt is also heavier than water. Electrostatic forces or brownian motion will fight against gravity, so the result is not entirely predictable. Oceans are vertically compartmentalized. Is something that anybody can observe empirically so citations are, again, unnecessary here Lets replace now the cannon balls in our example by rubber ducks. They will be free to disperse horizontally. Right? Again not. Not totally free, because the oceans have also horizontal barriers. If you dump a ton of rubber ducks in the ocean most of them will remain in the same current and travel together without leaving it. Will travel at a similar pace and reach the coast in a narrow interval of time. Tritium dumped in a point will travel with the same mass water without leaving it for an undefined amount of time. And in that equation we need to add also the effects of sea life, meteorology, temperature and topology of sea bottom. A mass water rich in tritium could end having jellyfishes rich in tritium also. Or be used as ballast and moved by a ship with a minimum dilution before to be discharged in front of a busy port. Is a chaotic model. We don't know what will happen so we should stop taking just the result that will suit better our wishes. Our plans are based into having zillions of liters to dilute the poison but the correct amount of dilutor will be much lower in the reality. We need to be aware of that.