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Japan to release Fukushima water into ocean
- teg4n_ 3y agoSounds like an origin story for Godzilla
- morelisp 3y agoThe actual data: > That water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organisation drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre, according to Tepco. Google tells me regular seawater is 14 Bq/l. Anyone with physics knowledge want to do the journalist's actual job and chime in? 10x worse than average sounds bad but 50x better than safe sounds good. What's the actual effect here? Is the tritium itself the problem (vs. I'm assuming, usually potassium)?
- x86x87 3y agoIt's a mixed bag. https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1029/ML102990104.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1029/ML102990104.pdf Who is 10000, but this varies with EU having a 100 bq/l limit, US a 740 limit, Canada 7000/l So going by WHO recommendation it's fine, but 2x what the limit in Europe is. Looks like normal levels are 5-15 /l depending where it's measured. So: this is probably 10x what you'd encounter naturally but allegedly way under the limit depending on who is making the recommendations (with EU somewhat of an outlier)
- djmips 3y agoBut the ocean is vast. So wouldn't this mix in and ultimately be an imperceptible change in the average?
- galleywest200 3y agoMaybe globally and eventually, but at first the nearby nations could possibly have elevated levels in their surrounding waters for the time being.
- morelisp 3y agoMy intuition could be way off, but I think there's more than 10x more water (even at some ridiculously thin surface depth) between Korea and Japan than there is in the Fukushima tanks. Wikipedia says 210 km³ flows into the Sea of Japan yearly. The article says the total stored water is "one million metric tons", which is... probably within the measurement error of the total SoJ flow.
- mentalpiracy 3y agoI wanted to math this out. East china sea: ~770,000 square km surface area; 350m average depth = 269,500,000,000 cubic meters of water First discharge = 7,800 cubic meters over 17 days == approx. 459m^3 released / day == 1.70315399 x 10^-9 They might find five or six extra tritium atoms per liter of water. Does this one off make it okay to dump into the ocean generally? No obviously not, the ocean is not just a magic dumpster to make bad things disappear. But in this case, tritium already exists naturally in sea water, and the introduced concentration has already been minimized. If your personal heuristics for avoiding risk push you towards avoiding Japanese seafood over this, that's fine, but you should actually be avoiding all seafood.
- x86x87 3y agoIn theory yes. In the real world I would not be surprised to hear that there are higher concentrations in specific areas due to currents and whatnot (ie it would take a while to evenly spread out)
- badcarbine 3y agoGoodbye seafood. Hello fish farming?
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoLooks like I'll have to ban Japanese products (Tea/Fish) and potentially anything from the pacific.. Japanese government is irresponsible
- jrflowers 3y agoBest to ban products from the Atlantic as well. It touches the Pacific.
- mentalpiracy 3y agohow would Japanese tea be affected by sea water?
- kylecazar 3y agoDid you read how high the WHO limit is for drinking water? Just using that as a baseline, this doesn't seem all that irresponsible.
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoYou'd be surprised what the WHO allows McDonald's to put in their food and in the whole supply chain Do you own research of the risks, I listen to scientists, not politicians
- dragonwriter 3y ago> You’d be surprised what the WHO allows McDonald’s to put in their food and in the whole supply chain Literally anything, but only because while there are many gorganizations in the world that regulate food, food service, and agricultural suppy chains, WHO isn’t one of them, being an intergovernmental coordination and information sharing entity, not a regulatory agency.
- Moomoomoo309 3y agoI'd recommend reading some of the other comments on here wrt how radioactive the water actually is. It seems to be well within safe levels for all but the most stringent agencies as-is, and they're going to put it in the ocean, where it will dilute to unnoticeable levels. This is a nothingburger story, plain and simple.
- Pigalowda 3y ago“190 becquerels per liter” Oh gee oh wow! 1 millicurie (mCi) = 37 megabecquerels (MBq) 1 PET/CT scan is between 4-20 mCi. So I guess if you drink, snort, bathe and just enematize yourselves with 48,684 liters of this poisonous horrible water it will be the same as getting a single PET CT. The amount of whining, specifically Chinese whining, is absurd. Especially as their shitty air pollution blankets the entire Pacific. These people have to breathe canned air Space Balls style but they have time to cry and complain about 190 becquerels that are going to be diluted to homeopathic concentration rapidly. Why don’t they find time to worry about radon gas? We all are probably breathing in enough of that shit to actually give us lung cancer but it doesn’t bother most.
- radicality 3y agoApparently even 1 banana smoothie will deliver an order of magnitude more radiation than drinking 1l of that water. https://ionactive.co.uk/resource-hub/blog/a-banana-smoothie-or-a-glass-of-tritiated-wastewater-from-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant https://ionactive.co.uk/resource-hub/blog/a-banana-smoothie-...
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoWhy release it and not keep it for domestic use then? > The amount of whining, specifically Chinese whining, is absurd. Especially as their shitty air pollution blankets the entire Pacific. Not just Chinese, South Koreans too https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/protests-mount-south-korea-over-japans-plan-release-fukushima-water-2023-08-23/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/protests-mount-so... You should drink that water if you complain about them being upset
- Pigalowda 3y agoThat’s fine, I’ll drink it. You going to get your hands on some and send it to me? You can post it on your telegram/signal/X accounts
- local_person 3y ago
- andrewstuart 3y agoWhy does it have to be released?
- guax 3y agoConcentrated = Slightly Dangerous And Hard to Manage Diluted = Very Safe It doesn't HAVE to be released per se but it's a non story. The issue is the optics and not the technicals.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoIt has to go somewhere, and this isn't the first time they've done this.
- diugauhai 3y ago[flagged]
- diugauhai 3y ago[flagged]