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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 s

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 5y 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 5y ago
[deleted]
ramchip 5y 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 5y 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?
  - jhugo 5y ago
    > As is known that Tritium is bioaccumulative to the point of probably acting as a persistent organic pollutant Huh? It has a half-life of 12 years.
    - jayparth 5y ago
      Biological half life is the more important figure here, by the way, and it’s very short (less than a month)
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > As is known that Tritium is bioaccumulative… What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Health_risks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Health_risks “HTO has a short biological half-life in the human body of 7 to 14 days, which both reduces the total effects of single-incident ingestion and precludes long-term bioaccumulation of HTO from the environment.”
    - pvaldes 5y ago
      https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22863967/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22863967/
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/62/4/557/6256015 https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/62/4/557/6256015 > Because some people are concerned about biological accumulation of OBT in the environment, we briefly summarize the behavior of OBT in the ecosystem. Scientific data about the environmental behavior of OBT are still limited, however, it is clear that biological accumulation is not the case for tritium including OBT.
        pvaldes 5y ago
        "A factory worker ingested tritium over 7.4 years. His exposure dose was estimated at 3–6 Sv. He developed isochromic anemia, and subsequently died of pancytopenia"
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Eating tritium straight from the factory for years at a time seems like a special case, yes? Yes, you can beat the biological half-life if you eat whopping doses of the stuff. That's... not a common situation. If you ate said factory worker, you'd be back to normal in a couple weeks, as long as you didn't keep eating factory workers.
        5y ago
  - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
    Tritiated water isn't particularly bioaccumulative: chemically, it's water and acts like it. The body doesn't preferentially retain tritium compared to normally hydrogen, so it doesn't concentrate in tissues like, say, dioxins or mercury. It can be incorporated into tissue, but not preferentially to normal hydrogen. Making dioxins with tritium atoms in place of hydrogen would probably be a bad idea, though.
ben_w 5y ago
> Then why not use it as a valuable source of the very expensive and non renewable Helium? Same reason we don’t use nuclear reactors to turn lead into gold, even though we can: it’s far more expensive than it’s worth.
- perihelions 5y ago
  That's actually what we do, in this case: nuclear reactor-derived tritium is the *sole* source of helium-3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Human_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Human_production It's *ten* times more expensive than gold! (If I remember correctly, medical ³He MRI's are done on a closed rebreather -- they literally want to recycle your lung air, it's that valuable).
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Indeed. I was assuming that the comment I was replying to was referring to helium in general because they were not more specific, and the normal form is ⁴He — we’re not filling party balloons with it.

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 5y 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 5y ago

[deleted]

ramchip 5y 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 5y 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?
- jhugo 5y ago
  > As is known that Tritium is bioaccumulative to the point of probably acting as a persistent organic pollutant Huh? It has a half-life of 12 years.
  - jayparth 5y ago
    Biological half life is the more important figure here, by the way, and it’s very short (less than a month)
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > As is known that Tritium is bioaccumulative… What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Health_risks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Health_risks “HTO has a short biological half-life in the human body of 7 to 14 days, which both reduces the total effects of single-incident ingestion and precludes long-term bioaccumulation of HTO from the environment.”
  - pvaldes 5y ago
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22863967/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22863967/
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/62/4/557/6256015 https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/62/4/557/6256015 > Because some people are concerned about biological accumulation of OBT in the environment, we briefly summarize the behavior of OBT in the ecosystem. Scientific data about the environmental behavior of OBT are still limited, however, it is clear that biological accumulation is not the case for tritium including OBT.
      - pvaldes 5y ago
        "A factory worker ingested tritium over 7.4 years. His exposure dose was estimated at 3–6 Sv. He developed isochromic anemia, and subsequently died of pancytopenia"
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Eating tritium straight from the factory for years at a time seems like a special case, yes? Yes, you can beat the biological half-life if you eat whopping doses of the stuff. That's... not a common situation. If you ate said factory worker, you'd be back to normal in a couple weeks, as long as you didn't keep eating factory workers.
        5y ago
- adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  Tritiated water isn't particularly bioaccumulative: chemically, it's water and acts like it. The body doesn't preferentially retain tritium compared to normally hydrogen, so it doesn't concentrate in tissues like, say, dioxins or mercury. It can be incorporated into tissue, but not preferentially to normal hydrogen. Making dioxins with tritium atoms in place of hydrogen would probably be a bad idea, though.

ben_w 5y ago

> Then why not use it as a valuable source of the very expensive and non renewable Helium? Same reason we don’t use nuclear reactors to turn lead into gold, even though we can: it’s far more expensive than it’s worth.

perihelions 5y ago
That's actually what we do, in this case: nuclear reactor-derived tritium is the *sole* source of helium-3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Human_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Human_production It's *ten* times more expensive than gold! (If I remember correctly, medical ³He MRI's are done on a closed rebreather -- they literally want to recycle your lung air, it's that valuable).
- ben_w 5y ago
  Indeed. I was assuming that the comment I was replying to was referring to helium in general because they were not more specific, and the normal form is ⁴He — we’re not filling party balloons with it.