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Tritium is already present in the ocean naturally and we are not talking about Nuclear Waste, as the title suggests, but clean water. We also cannot compare the

Tritium is already present in the ocean naturally and we are not talking about Nuclear Waste, as the title suggests, but clean water. We also cannot compare the tritium with mercury, because tritium, even if released in the ocean, decays away. Mecury, on the other hand, stays forever. The concerns that the water will affect marine life might be well intended but will cause more harm than good. In the worst possible case, this water will do less harm than what the other industries are releasing routinely, including water treatment plants. If you want to put your energy into preventing dirt from getting into the ocean, look literally anywhere else. People are dying every day due to fossil fuel caused pollution, because we are irrationaly overestimating the dangers of nuclear power which are and have always been the safest and cleanest way to produce electricity. These deaths are SOLELY a consequence of fear-based decision making. I cannot envision a bright future if we don’t start evaluating the consequences of different scenarios with a scientific approach and stop taking decisions based on feelings. Edit: spelling of tritium

jay_kyburz 4y ago
- janmalec 4y ago
  Yes, I am a researcher and a Ph.D. student in the field of nuclear reactor physics. I regularly operate and do experiments on a research nuclear reactor. My name is in my hn username and I have no problem defending my claims. I also own a popular TikTok account where I do science communication about nuclear reactors. My information about the water discharge comes from reports by IAEA, who is the authority on the matter.
  - gilleain 4y ago
    Out of curiosity, why do you write 'Thritium' for 'Tritium'?
    - janmalec 4y ago
      I suck at spelling.
      - gilleain 4y ago
        Hah fair enough. I wondered if it was a non-English spelling that was all :)
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Thanks you for doing what you. We need every possible person to teach about nuclear issue. The amount of wrong information out there is just insane.
  - belter 4y ago
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      That seems like an odd request. Something that is safe diluted across an entire ocean may not be safe to drink. In fact, regular seawater isn't all that great for you.
      - belter 4y ago
        It's the released water not the seawater. That causes vomiting, delirium, and hallucinations :-) “A Japanese official said it’s okay if you drink this water,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a news briefing. “Then please drink it.”
        boomboomsubban 4y ago
        The poster you asked is not that Japanese official. They just said dumping it was not a concern. Posting someone else's claim and asking them if they're ready to "back their claim" is disingenuous.
        belter 4y ago
        I realize that, and I would imagine everybody else in this thread. That was why, to try to avoid sounding disingenuous, I tried to apologize upfront for the question, and recognized and appreciated the poster qualifications. I was trying to qualify what safe means in this context. A bit like when talking for example to an aircraft manufacturer CEO, for example as in: 1) "This new airplane model is perfectly safe to fly" ...type of safe OR 2) "This new airplane model is perfectly safe to fly, I will do a weekly trip on it with my family" ...type of safe
        mrguyorama 4y ago
        This argument is not useful. #1 and #2 differ based on the disposition of the CEO. A stupid, or not good at thinking about statistics and risks, CEO will happily get on a plane to get a bigger bonus, even if it's not that safe.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    This reminds me of that Putnam contest comment, a bit of a classic on this forum.
    - perihelions 4y ago
      ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 )
    - selectodude 4y ago
      IIRC the guy who started Dropbox offered him a job in that thread too.
  - vixen99 4y ago
    At least shades of https://youtu.be/sXJ8tKRlW3E https://youtu.be/sXJ8tKRlW3E perhaps.
- clarionbell 4y ago
  Richmod may be an expert in his field. But even he couldn't point to anything that could actually happen. His report, and that of his colleagues, is intentionally vague, with no predictions and lot of FUD. Seriously, there is not a single thing they point to and say: "This could happen!" It's almost as if tritium wasn't that problematic and they were trying to get people who payed them for the study at least something for their troubles. Tritium has half-life of 12 years, into helium. It isn't something that would persist for generations in considerable levels.
  - pvaldes 4y ago
    Then why not use it as a valuable source of the very expensive and non renewable Helium? It seems that they are trowing money to the sea after paying yet for storing it for the last 11 years.
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      I know very little, but the amount of tritium involved likely decays into a trivial amount of helium. A quick look at Wikipedia suggests that there is 2.1 g of Tritium in 860,000 cubic meters of water.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ramchip 4y ago
      It's 15 grams of tritium in total, so it won't generate much helium. Source: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/qa.html https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi... [Q6]
      - pvaldes 4y ago
        Very interesting, thanks. Another silly question. As is known that Tritium is bioaccumulative to the point of probably acting as a persistent organic pollutant, why they don't use biology to concentrate and eventually remove it from the tanks?. Or to keep it safely trapped in the tanks?
- newsclues 4y ago
  Credentialism and appeals. To authority to silence dissent are disgusting anti-scientific mistakes that plague our society. Source: I’m a dropout and frequently encounter highly educated idiots
  - Chris2048 4y ago
    But what's the alternative? You want any random idiot to have a voice? I'd assume there are more un-educated idiots than educated ones - your personal issue is not getting the credential to prove your worth.
- belorn 4y ago
  It is without doubt a critical gaps in information. We need to know first how much radionuclides already exist in the ocean (per volume), and where those comes from. All combustion and mining release to some degree radioactive isotopes into the environment, and much of it ends up sooner or later into the ocean. A common popular science experiment for kids is to show water samples from different sources and store them for a few days. Most assume that rain is pretty clean, but in reality it tend to be almost comparable to untreated sewage water and one of the more nasty samples after a few days. More studies are needed is something everyone should agree on regardless on which outcome people are voting for.
  - 7952 4y ago
    Exactly, more studies are good. Third party review is a cornerstone of science.
TedShiller 4y ago
Right, it’s all safe and fine as long as we don’t release the water into your own backyard and swimming pool.
- yreg 4y ago
  What a pointless and unnecessarily personal attack. A rotting tuna is safe and fine in an ocean and I wouldn't want it in my own swimming pool.
- janmalec 4y ago
  Well actually, at 1/40 the regulatory tritium limit for drinking water, it is perfectly suitable for any backyard and/or swimming pool.
  - contravariant 4y ago
    How did you arrive at that number? Going by one of the comments in this thread it would be 760 TBq of tritium, which would require 76,000,000 m^3 of water to get below the 10 Bg/m^3 limit of the world health organization. (granted I don't know where the 760 TBq figure came from either, I'm just trying to get some clarity)
    - saalweachter 4y ago
      The process for releasing typically dilutes to a standard level before releasing into the ocean/ other water way. So when it's released, it's already at a level you could swim in (drink?), there's no process for it accumulating into a more concentrated form in the ocean, and it has a half-life of 12 years.
      - contravariant 4y ago
        Ah I see I may have misinterpreted the comment. I took it to mean it should somehow fit in a regular size swimming pool. As far as I can figure out it probably does not.
Reason077 4y ago
> "Tritium is already present in the ocean naturally" Exactly. And if the quantities Japan are talking about are correct (860 TBq / trillion becquerels), this is a huge fuss about nothing. France's La Hague nuclear reprocessing facility discharges many times more tritium than that into the English Channel every single year as part of it's normal operations!
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  And so do nuclear plants as part of their day to day operations. I don't have the figures to back that up but it's more than likely that The Fukushima Daiichi plant released more tritium during its operational life than the amount we're talking about right now. (Edit: according to the source from Wikipedia[1], we're talking about ~800TBq, which represents between 2 years and a decade of a operating plant discharge). This is a complete non-issue. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Fission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Fission
- pera 4y ago
  Tritium is not the only radioactive isotope present though: https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-japan-stateless/2020/10/5e303093-greenpeace_stemmingthetide2020_fukushima_radioactive_water_crisis_en_final.pdf https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-japan-stateless/20... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/fukushima-reactor-water-could-damage-human-dna-if-released-says-greenpeace https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/fukushima-reac... > In addition to high levels of hazardous radionuclides such as strontium-90, TEPCO on 27 August 2020 acknowledged for the first time the presence of high levels of carbon-14 in the contaminated tank water
  - Reason077 4y ago
    The idea is that the strontium-90, carbon-14, etc can be filtered out, leaving just the tritiated water to be discharged.
    - pera 4y ago
      According to the article I cited: > Greenpeace said it had confirmed with Tepco that the system was not designed to remove carbon-14 Maybe there are updates on this matter but I couldn't find anything online.
Pyramus 4y ago
> nuclear power which are and have always been the safest and cleanest way to produce electricity Definitely not. There's a good argument to be made nuclear power in the 'global North' is relatively safe today. At the same time you will be hard pressed to find evidence that nuclear power was safe in the past or is safe today in politically unstable environments.
- SECProto 4y ago
  > At the same time you will be hard pressed to find evidence that nuclear power was safe in the past or is safe today in politically unstable environments. First of all, that isn't the same claim the post above to you was making. Second, [1]here's a chart showing the cleanest and safest power sources, backing up the claim made in the comment above yours. Nuclear is cleanest, and on safety it's close but falls behind the renewables (still 2-3 orders of magnitude safer than the fossil fuel sources). [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
  - Pyramus 4y ago
    That's the issue with "safe" - it's difficult to capture in a single factor like number of accidents and for this factor, the distribution of the metric is very different. Here's a different metric that entails both: Market price to ensure a nuclear power plant against damages. Why are they so high as to make nuclear power creation uneconomical? A market inefficiency? It's very hard to explain away. So my point is: It's not black and white unfortunately, and it's both a technological and societal effort to make nuclear power safe.
    - SECProto 4y ago
      > Market price to ensure a nuclear power plant against damages. Why are they so high as to make nuclear power creation uneconomical? A market inefficiency? Yes. The nonrenewable energies (coal, natgas, oil) in my source are constantly emitting carbon dioxide, an unpriced negative externality. This cost is entirely socialized - insurers don't pay for it, producers and users don't pay for it - it's largely being shifted to future residents of planet earth, with a small fraction of the cost starting to be felt now, and paid by government (emergency relief). Has both high cost and high (100%) risk. Insurers don't take on any of this. Compare that with nuclear, where the negative impact is risk of meltdown - high cost but low risk - and insurers are the ones taking it on.
WithinReason 4y ago
Also, for another bit of comparison, there's 4.5 Billion metric tons of uranium in the ocean already: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6191296 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6191296
- teawrecks 4y ago
  That number doesn't mean anything on its own. How about a ppb ratio?
  - WithinReason 4y ago
    The article specified the amount in absolute quantities as well instead of a ppb ratio.
Archelaos 4y ago
> If you want to put your energy into preventing dirt from getting into the ocean, look literally anywhere else. This line of thinking is what brought about our current environmental clamities. Everybody says: Look, what I am doing to the environemnt is just a tiny, tiny bit of what others are doing. The end result is a massive destruction of the ecosphere. Every dumping of waste into the ocean is a liablity. > the safest and cleanest way to produce electricity. Only if you hand pick studies in favour of your opinion. The wast will be around until the end of humanity. No one really knows whether the optimists, who want to store it away "forever", will succeed. If not, ...
- janmalec 4y ago
  You have completely missed my point. Every time you drive to work or flush your toilet you make an impact to the environment. How do you justify this action? Is it ok because you think that the impact to the environment is small? Will the end result of your action be a "massive destruction of the ecosphere"? Maybe it will be, but you have no other choice in life than evaluate all impacts and improve where you can and where it matters most.
  - Archelaos 4y ago
    I think, I understood you very well. The flushing of the toilet is of course also a liability. But my point is, nevertheless to take it serious, even though its impact might be small. I think we should not only focus on where it matters the most, and ignore the rest, but try to improve the situation across the board, including the smaller things.
    - madsbuch 4y ago
      I think this comment very well encompasses the modern discourse on sustainability: With a complete lack of a principle of proportionality. The problem by elevating the seriousness of flushing a toilet, is that it dilutes more severe cases where one could do an actual impact.
      - 4y ago
engineer_22 4y ago
>I cannot envision a bright future if we don’t start... The future is bright whether you see it or not. Take a vacation, find a less stressful job, start enjoying life.
serenitylater 4y ago
kyrra 4y ago
> People are dying every day due to fossil fuel caused pollution. You don't dive into this in a single sentence, but I do want to raise the point that fossil fuels, while they are bad are better than the alternatives for many countries, especially developing ones. Let's consider some alternatives. Wood and animal waste: for developing nations that need any energy they can get, they will burn these 2, which are massively worse than fossil fuels, and no where near as energy dense. Coal: massive step up from the above. Yes it burns dirty, but there are capture methods to make coal cleaner. Natural gas: one of the best out there. Low emissions and again, energy dense. Turned into LNG, it's easy to transport and use elsewhere. Nothing... This is the point that I think lots of people miss. Having access to energy dense materials like coal or LNG are a major factor in bring developing nation people out of poverty. Not having these "dirty" energy sources that kill some is way worse than not having it at all (more people will die without the energy). People need to be reasonable and realize that rich nations can go nuclear and renewable, but we still need to allow developing nations to have access to the others, even encourage it. That means first world nations need to produce more LNG and supply it wherever possible. Sadly many want to stop all fossil fuel production.
- Reason077 4y ago
  > "Wood and animal waste" Also known as biomass. These are a renewable resource and massively better than fossil fuels when it comes to climate change. Obviously you need to ensure they are burnt in a controlled environment (not dumping smoke into people's kitchens, for example), but in the right circumstances they are vastly preferable to coal and gas. Developing countries need not repeat the same mistakes as the developed world. We have better technology and far more options now.
  - cwp 4y ago
    What does renewability have to do with climate change?
    - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
      When you burn a tree, everything that's released into the atmosphere is something the tree absorbed from the atmosphere as it grew. So it's plus minus zero in terms of pollution. When you burn non-renewables, i.e. stuff dug up from the ground, you're adding pollution into the atmosphere. Pollution that changes the climate.
yandrypozo 4y ago
Thank you for saying that, I still don't get how so many people who claim to take decision based on science are so against nuclear tech.
- jerf 4y ago
  Well, one reason is that a lot of people casually assume that the baseline level of radiation in the natural environment is 0.0000000...., but it's not. Uranium has been extracted from seawater before. It's not economically practical, but it can be done, because seawater has uranium in it already. Tritium is also already in there. Issues of concentration at the point where it is put into the ocean can be an issue, but once dispersed this won't turn the pristine, 0.0000000...% radioactive ocean into a radioactive hellscape, it represents an impercetible percentage increase of what is already there. That doesn't mean we shouldn't think about the implications, but "thinking about the implications" shouldn't start from incorrect understandings of the nature of the current world. Earth is an amazing environment. It does an incredible job of giving us a low-radiation environment, compared to most of the rest of the universe which ranges from "dangerous" to "radioactive wasteland". But it's not perfect and we are not at a flat 0 even here.
  - yandrypozo 4y ago
    Awesome, that's truly great to know, makes total sense in fact nothing is 0.00% pure or safe in nature and that's beautiful.
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  Science is irrelevant. There still hasn't been a political decision in my country on where to store nuclear waste.
  - yandrypozo 4y ago
    I would say science is only relevant for political agendas.
  - bsagdiyev 4y ago
teawrecks 4y ago
> Tritium is already present in the ocean Would that be like saying "carbon dioxide is already present in the atmosphere"?
- DennisP 4y ago
  We've increased the atmosphere's CO2 concentration by 50%. A few grams of tritium won't significantly change its concentration in the ocean.
  - forty 4y ago
    Is that true locally though? There is sure a lot of water in the ocean, but it's still possible to poison stuff locally, wherever you drop the stuff is going to have higher concentration, at least for a short while.
    - yreg 4y ago
      Another commenter down the thread: >The process for releasing typically dilutes to a standard level before releasing into the ocean/ other water way. So when it's released, it's already at a level you could swim in (drink?), there's no process for it accumulating into a more concentrated form in the ocean, and it has a half-life of 12 years.
- janmalec 4y ago
  It would be if we added way more tritium. We are adding a very small amount compared to what is already there naturally and even that will decay away.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Well, it's actually that radionuclides like radioactive strontium and cesium are still present in the wastewater above regulatory standards. These heavy metals bioaccumulate as they have similar characteristics to biological nutrients like potassium and calcium, and so are absorbed into biomass. Successive rounds of predation in the ocean can concentrate these elements in food species like tuna etc. > In the 10 years since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, public trust in the government and the power company has suffered. As the decommissioning process will last at least another 30 years or more, the Japanese government should reconsider how it makes decisions about decommissioning and reconstruction. Public concern related to the government’s recent announcement that it will release treated water into the sea is the tip of iceberg. It is the responsibility of the Japanese government and nuclear industry to manage this process successfully on behalf of all citizens of Japan and the world. The accident is not over yet." https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/whats-wrong-with-japans-anticipated-release-of-fukushimas-wastewater/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/whats-wrong-with-japans-anti...
causi 4y ago
I maintain that "being utter horseshit" should be added to the reasons to flag a submission.
7952 4y ago
And in order to come to any of those conclusions you have to get independent experts to perform a review. Your comment is an emotional defence of your own heuristics. Science requires verification. Also, the ad hominem attack on people wasting their time on this kind of study is really weak. We should want proper reviews of all large scale industrial processes that release into the ocean. That does not preclude nuclear power.

jay_kyburz 4y ago

janmalec 4y ago
Yes, I am a researcher and a Ph.D. student in the field of nuclear reactor physics. I regularly operate and do experiments on a research nuclear reactor. My name is in my hn username and I have no problem defending my claims. I also own a popular TikTok account where I do science communication about nuclear reactors. My information about the water discharge comes from reports by IAEA, who is the authority on the matter.
- gilleain 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, why do you write 'Thritium' for 'Tritium'?
  - janmalec 4y ago
    I suck at spelling.
    - gilleain 4y ago
      Hah fair enough. I wondered if it was a non-English spelling that was all :)
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Thanks you for doing what you. We need every possible person to teach about nuclear issue. The amount of wrong information out there is just insane.
- belter 4y ago
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    That seems like an odd request. Something that is safe diluted across an entire ocean may not be safe to drink. In fact, regular seawater isn't all that great for you.
    - belter 4y ago
      It's the released water not the seawater. That causes vomiting, delirium, and hallucinations :-) “A Japanese official said it’s okay if you drink this water,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a news briefing. “Then please drink it.”
      - boomboomsubban 4y ago
        The poster you asked is not that Japanese official. They just said dumping it was not a concern. Posting someone else's claim and asking them if they're ready to "back their claim" is disingenuous.
        belter 4y ago
        I realize that, and I would imagine everybody else in this thread. That was why, to try to avoid sounding disingenuous, I tried to apologize upfront for the question, and recognized and appreciated the poster qualifications. I was trying to qualify what safe means in this context. A bit like when talking for example to an aircraft manufacturer CEO, for example as in: 1) "This new airplane model is perfectly safe to fly" ...type of safe OR 2) "This new airplane model is perfectly safe to fly, I will do a weekly trip on it with my family" ...type of safe
        mrguyorama 4y ago
        This argument is not useful. #1 and #2 differ based on the disposition of the CEO. A stupid, or not good at thinking about statistics and risks, CEO will happily get on a plane to get a bigger bonus, even if it's not that safe.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  This reminds me of that Putnam contest comment, a bit of a classic on this forum.
  - perihelions 4y ago
    ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 )
  - selectodude 4y ago
    IIRC the guy who started Dropbox offered him a job in that thread too.
- vixen99 4y ago
  At least shades of https://youtu.be/sXJ8tKRlW3E https://youtu.be/sXJ8tKRlW3E perhaps.
clarionbell 4y ago
Richmod may be an expert in his field. But even he couldn't point to anything that could actually happen. His report, and that of his colleagues, is intentionally vague, with no predictions and lot of FUD. Seriously, there is not a single thing they point to and say: "This could happen!" It's almost as if tritium wasn't that problematic and they were trying to get people who payed them for the study at least something for their troubles. Tritium has half-life of 12 years, into helium. It isn't something that would persist for generations in considerable levels.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  Then why not use it as a valuable source of the very expensive and non renewable Helium? It seems that they are trowing money to the sea after paying yet for storing it for the last 11 years.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    I know very little, but the amount of tritium involved likely decays into a trivial amount of helium. A quick look at Wikipedia suggests that there is 2.1 g of Tritium in 860,000 cubic meters of water.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ramchip 4y ago
    It's 15 grams of tritium in total, so it won't generate much helium. Source: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/qa.html https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi... [Q6]
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      Very interesting, thanks. Another silly question. As is known that Tritium is bioaccumulative to the point of probably acting as a persistent organic pollutant, why they don't use biology to concentrate and eventually remove it from the tanks?. Or to keep it safely trapped in the tanks?
newsclues 4y ago
Credentialism and appeals. To authority to silence dissent are disgusting anti-scientific mistakes that plague our society. Source: I’m a dropout and frequently encounter highly educated idiots
- Chris2048 4y ago
  But what's the alternative? You want any random idiot to have a voice? I'd assume there are more un-educated idiots than educated ones - your personal issue is not getting the credential to prove your worth.
belorn 4y ago
It is without doubt a critical gaps in information. We need to know first how much radionuclides already exist in the ocean (per volume), and where those comes from. All combustion and mining release to some degree radioactive isotopes into the environment, and much of it ends up sooner or later into the ocean. A common popular science experiment for kids is to show water samples from different sources and store them for a few days. Most assume that rain is pretty clean, but in reality it tend to be almost comparable to untreated sewage water and one of the more nasty samples after a few days. More studies are needed is something everyone should agree on regardless on which outcome people are voting for.
- 7952 4y ago
  Exactly, more studies are good. Third party review is a cornerstone of science.

TedShiller 4y ago

Right, it’s all safe and fine as long as we don’t release the water into your own backyard and swimming pool.

yreg 4y ago
What a pointless and unnecessarily personal attack. A rotting tuna is safe and fine in an ocean and I wouldn't want it in my own swimming pool.
janmalec 4y ago
Well actually, at 1/40 the regulatory tritium limit for drinking water, it is perfectly suitable for any backyard and/or swimming pool.
- contravariant 4y ago
  How did you arrive at that number? Going by one of the comments in this thread it would be 760 TBq of tritium, which would require 76,000,000 m^3 of water to get below the 10 Bg/m^3 limit of the world health organization. (granted I don't know where the 760 TBq figure came from either, I'm just trying to get some clarity)
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    The process for releasing typically dilutes to a standard level before releasing into the ocean/ other water way. So when it's released, it's already at a level you could swim in (drink?), there's no process for it accumulating into a more concentrated form in the ocean, and it has a half-life of 12 years.
    - contravariant 4y ago
      Ah I see I may have misinterpreted the comment. I took it to mean it should somehow fit in a regular size swimming pool. As far as I can figure out it probably does not.

Reason077 4y ago

> "Tritium is already present in the ocean naturally" Exactly. And if the quantities Japan are talking about are correct (860 TBq / trillion becquerels), this is a huge fuss about nothing. France's La Hague nuclear reprocessing facility discharges many times more tritium than that into the English Channel every single year as part of it's normal operations!

littlestymaar 4y ago
And so do nuclear plants as part of their day to day operations. I don't have the figures to back that up but it's more than likely that The Fukushima Daiichi plant released more tritium during its operational life than the amount we're talking about right now. (Edit: according to the source from Wikipedia[1], we're talking about ~800TBq, which represents between 2 years and a decade of a operating plant discharge). This is a complete non-issue. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Fission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Fission
pera 4y ago
Tritium is not the only radioactive isotope present though: https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-japan-stateless/2020/10/5e303093-greenpeace_stemmingthetide2020_fukushima_radioactive_water_crisis_en_final.pdf https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-japan-stateless/20... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/fukushima-reactor-water-could-damage-human-dna-if-released-says-greenpeace https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/fukushima-reac... > In addition to high levels of hazardous radionuclides such as strontium-90, TEPCO on 27 August 2020 acknowledged for the first time the presence of high levels of carbon-14 in the contaminated tank water
- Reason077 4y ago
  The idea is that the strontium-90, carbon-14, etc can be filtered out, leaving just the tritiated water to be discharged.
  - pera 4y ago
    According to the article I cited: > Greenpeace said it had confirmed with Tepco that the system was not designed to remove carbon-14 Maybe there are updates on this matter but I couldn't find anything online.

Pyramus 4y ago

> nuclear power which are and have always been the safest and cleanest way to produce electricity Definitely not. There's a good argument to be made nuclear power in the 'global North' is relatively safe today. At the same time you will be hard pressed to find evidence that nuclear power was safe in the past or is safe today in politically unstable environments.

SECProto 4y ago
> At the same time you will be hard pressed to find evidence that nuclear power was safe in the past or is safe today in politically unstable environments. First of all, that isn't the same claim the post above to you was making. Second, [1]here's a chart showing the cleanest and safest power sources, backing up the claim made in the comment above yours. Nuclear is cleanest, and on safety it's close but falls behind the renewables (still 2-3 orders of magnitude safer than the fossil fuel sources). [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- Pyramus 4y ago
  That's the issue with "safe" - it's difficult to capture in a single factor like number of accidents and for this factor, the distribution of the metric is very different. Here's a different metric that entails both: Market price to ensure a nuclear power plant against damages. Why are they so high as to make nuclear power creation uneconomical? A market inefficiency? It's very hard to explain away. So my point is: It's not black and white unfortunately, and it's both a technological and societal effort to make nuclear power safe.
  - SECProto 4y ago
    > Market price to ensure a nuclear power plant against damages. Why are they so high as to make nuclear power creation uneconomical? A market inefficiency? Yes. The nonrenewable energies (coal, natgas, oil) in my source are constantly emitting carbon dioxide, an unpriced negative externality. This cost is entirely socialized - insurers don't pay for it, producers and users don't pay for it - it's largely being shifted to future residents of planet earth, with a small fraction of the cost starting to be felt now, and paid by government (emergency relief). Has both high cost and high (100%) risk. Insurers don't take on any of this. Compare that with nuclear, where the negative impact is risk of meltdown - high cost but low risk - and insurers are the ones taking it on.

WithinReason 4y ago

Also, for another bit of comparison, there's 4.5 Billion metric tons of uranium in the ocean already: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6191296 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6191296

teawrecks 4y ago
That number doesn't mean anything on its own. How about a ppb ratio?
- WithinReason 4y ago
  The article specified the amount in absolute quantities as well instead of a ppb ratio.

Archelaos 4y ago

> If you want to put your energy into preventing dirt from getting into the ocean, look literally anywhere else. This line of thinking is what brought about our current environmental clamities. Everybody says: Look, what I am doing to the environemnt is just a tiny, tiny bit of what others are doing. The end result is a massive destruction of the ecosphere. Every dumping of waste into the ocean is a liablity. > the safest and cleanest way to produce electricity. Only if you hand pick studies in favour of your opinion. The wast will be around until the end of humanity. No one really knows whether the optimists, who want to store it away "forever", will succeed. If not, ...

janmalec 4y ago
You have completely missed my point. Every time you drive to work or flush your toilet you make an impact to the environment. How do you justify this action? Is it ok because you think that the impact to the environment is small? Will the end result of your action be a "massive destruction of the ecosphere"? Maybe it will be, but you have no other choice in life than evaluate all impacts and improve where you can and where it matters most.
- Archelaos 4y ago
  I think, I understood you very well. The flushing of the toilet is of course also a liability. But my point is, nevertheless to take it serious, even though its impact might be small. I think we should not only focus on where it matters the most, and ignore the rest, but try to improve the situation across the board, including the smaller things.
  - madsbuch 4y ago
    I think this comment very well encompasses the modern discourse on sustainability: With a complete lack of a principle of proportionality. The problem by elevating the seriousness of flushing a toilet, is that it dilutes more severe cases where one could do an actual impact.
    - 4y ago

engineer_22 4y ago

>I cannot envision a bright future if we don’t start... The future is bright whether you see it or not. Take a vacation, find a less stressful job, start enjoying life.

serenitylater 4y ago

kyrra 4y ago

> People are dying every day due to fossil fuel caused pollution. You don't dive into this in a single sentence, but I do want to raise the point that fossil fuels, while they are bad are better than the alternatives for many countries, especially developing ones. Let's consider some alternatives. Wood and animal waste: for developing nations that need any energy they can get, they will burn these 2, which are massively worse than fossil fuels, and no where near as energy dense. Coal: massive step up from the above. Yes it burns dirty, but there are capture methods to make coal cleaner. Natural gas: one of the best out there. Low emissions and again, energy dense. Turned into LNG, it's easy to transport and use elsewhere. Nothing... This is the point that I think lots of people miss. Having access to energy dense materials like coal or LNG are a major factor in bring developing nation people out of poverty. Not having these "dirty" energy sources that kill some is way worse than not having it at all (more people will die without the energy). People need to be reasonable and realize that rich nations can go nuclear and renewable, but we still need to allow developing nations to have access to the others, even encourage it. That means first world nations need to produce more LNG and supply it wherever possible. Sadly many want to stop all fossil fuel production.

Reason077 4y ago
> "Wood and animal waste" Also known as biomass. These are a renewable resource and massively better than fossil fuels when it comes to climate change. Obviously you need to ensure they are burnt in a controlled environment (not dumping smoke into people's kitchens, for example), but in the right circumstances they are vastly preferable to coal and gas. Developing countries need not repeat the same mistakes as the developed world. We have better technology and far more options now.
- cwp 4y ago
  What does renewability have to do with climate change?
  - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
    When you burn a tree, everything that's released into the atmosphere is something the tree absorbed from the atmosphere as it grew. So it's plus minus zero in terms of pollution. When you burn non-renewables, i.e. stuff dug up from the ground, you're adding pollution into the atmosphere. Pollution that changes the climate.

yandrypozo 4y ago

Thank you for saying that, I still don't get how so many people who claim to take decision based on science are so against nuclear tech.

jerf 4y ago
Well, one reason is that a lot of people casually assume that the baseline level of radiation in the natural environment is 0.0000000...., but it's not. Uranium has been extracted from seawater before. It's not economically practical, but it can be done, because seawater has uranium in it already. Tritium is also already in there. Issues of concentration at the point where it is put into the ocean can be an issue, but once dispersed this won't turn the pristine, 0.0000000...% radioactive ocean into a radioactive hellscape, it represents an impercetible percentage increase of what is already there. That doesn't mean we shouldn't think about the implications, but "thinking about the implications" shouldn't start from incorrect understandings of the nature of the current world. Earth is an amazing environment. It does an incredible job of giving us a low-radiation environment, compared to most of the rest of the universe which ranges from "dangerous" to "radioactive wasteland". But it's not perfect and we are not at a flat 0 even here.
- yandrypozo 4y ago
  Awesome, that's truly great to know, makes total sense in fact nothing is 0.00% pure or safe in nature and that's beautiful.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Science is irrelevant. There still hasn't been a political decision in my country on where to store nuclear waste.
- yandrypozo 4y ago
  I would say science is only relevant for political agendas.
- bsagdiyev 4y ago

teawrecks 4y ago

> Tritium is already present in the ocean Would that be like saying "carbon dioxide is already present in the atmosphere"?

DennisP 4y ago
We've increased the atmosphere's CO2 concentration by 50%. A few grams of tritium won't significantly change its concentration in the ocean.
- forty 4y ago
  Is that true locally though? There is sure a lot of water in the ocean, but it's still possible to poison stuff locally, wherever you drop the stuff is going to have higher concentration, at least for a short while.
  - yreg 4y ago
    Another commenter down the thread: >The process for releasing typically dilutes to a standard level before releasing into the ocean/ other water way. So when it's released, it's already at a level you could swim in (drink?), there's no process for it accumulating into a more concentrated form in the ocean, and it has a half-life of 12 years.
janmalec 4y ago
It would be if we added way more tritium. We are adding a very small amount compared to what is already there naturally and even that will decay away.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Well, it's actually that radionuclides like radioactive strontium and cesium are still present in the wastewater above regulatory standards. These heavy metals bioaccumulate as they have similar characteristics to biological nutrients like potassium and calcium, and so are absorbed into biomass. Successive rounds of predation in the ocean can concentrate these elements in food species like tuna etc. > In the 10 years since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, public trust in the government and the power company has suffered. As the decommissioning process will last at least another 30 years or more, the Japanese government should reconsider how it makes decisions about decommissioning and reconstruction. Public concern related to the government’s recent announcement that it will release treated water into the sea is the tip of iceberg. It is the responsibility of the Japanese government and nuclear industry to manage this process successfully on behalf of all citizens of Japan and the world. The accident is not over yet." https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/whats-wrong-with-japans-anticipated-release-of-fukushimas-wastewater/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/whats-wrong-with-japans-anti...

causi 4y ago

I maintain that "being utter horseshit" should be added to the reasons to flag a submission.

7952 4y ago

And in order to come to any of those conclusions you have to get independent experts to perform a review. Your comment is an emotional defence of your own heuristics. Science requires verification. Also, the ad hominem attack on people wasting their time on this kind of study is really weak. We should want proper reviews of all large scale industrial processes that release into the ocean. That does not preclude nuclear power.