5 ms·

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://

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?
- jhugo 4y 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 4y ago
    Biological half life is the more important figure here, by the way, and it’s very short (less than a month)
- ceejayoz 4y 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 4y ago
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22863967/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22863967/
    - ceejayoz 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
        adhesive_wombat 4y ago
        At a dose factor of 0.000018 mSv/kBq for tritiated water, you would get a 3 Sv dose from "only" 1/5000 of the water. Drinking (or inhaling) 50,000 gallons of the (undiluted, so best case in terms of volume) water from storage tanks would probably get you with kidney failure somewhat before the tritium does.
- adhesive_wombat 4y 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.

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?

jhugo 4y 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 4y ago
  Biological half life is the more important figure here, by the way, and it’s very short (less than a month)
ceejayoz 4y 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 4y ago
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22863967/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22863967/
  - ceejayoz 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
        adhesive_wombat 4y ago
        At a dose factor of 0.000018 mSv/kBq for tritiated water, you would get a 3 Sv dose from "only" 1/5000 of the water. Drinking (or inhaling) 50,000 gallons of the (undiluted, so best case in terms of volume) water from storage tanks would probably get you with kidney failure somewhat before the tritium does.
adhesive_wombat 4y 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.