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No One Knows What to Do with Fukushima’s Endless Tanks of Radioactive Water
- skidoo 11y agoSell it to Jim Beam.
- filoeleven 11y agoThis is more for fixing the surrounding area than the water, but if some fungi really do eat radiation then there should be a way to filter the water as well. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/radiation-helps-fungi-grow/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/radiation-helps-fu... > Based on experiments with three different types of fungi, they believe the melanin-containing breeds absorb the high levels of energy in ionizing radiation and somehow turn it into a biologically useful (and benign) form, akin to a dark and dangerous version of photosynthesis. http://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/using-fungi-remediate-radiation-fukushima http://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/using-fungi-remediate... > G. glutinosus has been reported to absorb – via the mycelium – and concentrate radioactive Cesium 137 more than 10,000-fold over ambient background levels. Many other mycorrhizal mushroom species also hyper-accumulate. The second method still leaves you with radioactive waste (harvested mushrooms are burned, the ash is turned into glass) but it gets the radiation out of the environment.
- notatoad 11y agoIs there a reason it can't just stay in the tanks indefinitely?
- luckman212 11y agoMy interpretation is that the water continues to accumulate, so the problem isn't only what to do with the existing contaminated water, but how to avoid having to build an endless amount of storage tanks.
- joshuapants 11y agoI think the biggest problem is that it isn't just a few tanks of water, it's a constantly growing amount. It's expensive and impractical to keep building tanks, it's expensive and impractical to filter out the tritium, and it's questionable whether just pumping it out to sea is acceptable (I imagine that if they were able to dump it far into the ocean away from any land it would be more palatable, but that would also be, you guessed it, impractical and expensive).
- eck 11y ago> it's a constantly growing amount. If they're still pumping coolant into the reactors, why aren't they reusing the water that's already radioactive for that purpose?
- hydrogen18 11y agoThey pump in freshwater to the cooling circuit of the reactor, like from the tap. The water that comes back out of the discharge has gained temperature but has no tritium. They probably just return this water to the sewer system for now. Just the water from the leaks has be retained at present. If they mixed the water from the tanks, they'd have to retain 100% of the flow of the water. Now if they built a big cooling pond and stuff they could reuse the water 'forever'. But the last thing you want is a big pond of slightly radioactive water than all kinds of wildlife can come live in.
- mattzito 11y agoWell, IANAPP but a quick google skim shows that the half-life of tritium is 12 years, roughly. That's a long time to store something to get down to levels where you could feel confident dumping the water out, or accepting the risk that it would end up in the groundwater.
- kansface 11y agoThere will be another earthquake/tsunami before it decays.
- velodrome 11y agoA few of the tanks are leaking...
- tptacek 11y agoIf it's just tritiated water, is there a good reason it can't just be dumped into the ocean? It won't bioaccumulate, right?
- melling 11y agoThat's what the article says but I guess there's still concern. The disaster has cost $150 billion. http://rt.com/news/183052-japan-fukushima-costs-study http://rt.com/news/183052-japan-fukushima-costs-study
- joshuapants 11y agoAs they say in the article, tritium is usually not considered a health hazard, but organizations are starting to question that standpoint. It would, as they also say in the article, be politically unpopular to do so regardless of what the actual effects are.
- tptacek 11y agoWell, there's two questions, right? The first is how harmful tritiated water is to begin with. It's a low-energy beta emitter and, because it mixes quickly and permanently with water, it's eliminated quickly as well. You wouldn't want to go out of your way to drink it, though. The second question is, what is the environmental impact of dumping it in the ocean? No matter how dangerous it is, the ocean is gigantic. So you want to know: are there environmental processes that concentrate or amplify it? Later: I had to leave before writing this last part. Obviously, all things being equal, you'd rather TEPCO keep spending money to keep this stuff out of the ocean. But are all things equal? Is it riskier to try to contain it?
- ceejayoz 11y ago> The second question is, what is the environmental impact of dumping it in the ocean? This is the wrong question. The relevant question is "what is the political impact of dumping it in the ocean?" and the answer is "devastating". No matter how scientifically sound the solution, "dump it all in the ocean" simply can't happen.
- stretchwithme 11y agoFreeze it and drop it in an antarctic glacier that will take a long time to melt. Bury where there's already plenty of radioactivity. It does occur in nature, I hear. The more radioactive it is, the shorter the half-life, right?
- krschultz 11y agoThe half life is 12.3 years. If the amount of water was not growing it wouldn't be a huge problem. The tanks they are building will probably last at least 40+ years before having to be replaced, at which point we're talking about water that is not all that dangerous. If you release a tiny bit at a time it shouldn't be a problem. However the water keeps accumulating. I don't think that part is sustainable. Until they fix the root cause of a seemingly endless amount of water that needs to be stored, this is going to be a problem.
- mirimir 11y agoThe half-life of Tritium is 12.3 years. So as long as substantially everything with longer half-life has been removed, storage for a century or so would suffice. Maybe put it in a bunch of large bags and tow it to Antarctica. But you'd need to avoid the bits that are already collapsing.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- icanhackit 11y agoCould you create robust, modular storage vats that double as interlocking elements of a sea-wall to hold back future tsunamis? I imagine it'd be expensive but you're killing a few birds with one stone. If containment in a single vat fails then the radioactive water is dispersed in a vast sea as opposed to a small land area. I also wonder if you could blast pellets of radioactive waste with a very big laser like the one at the NIF [0]. I don't know much about physics so I accept this could be a disastrous or futile idea but if anyone can comment that would be great. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility
- tdy721 11y agoThis is not the kind of problem it's being made out to be here. First of all, Tritium is an beta emitter, blocked by a piece of paper or the skin. It's not dangerous in the environment unless it's consumed. Even better, it does not bio-accumulate, because it's water. Second, the half life of Tritium is 12.4 years. Consider this excerpt: """ The World Health Organization’s standard for tritium in drinking water is 10,000 becquerels per liter (34 ounces). According to Mayumi Yoshida, a TEPCO communications officer, Fukushima’s stored water contains between 1 and 5 million becquerels per liter. """ So our radioactive waste is acceptable as Drinking Water at 10K. Lets do the math 5000000/(2^9) = 9765.625 9*12.4 = 111.6 years No one knows what do about the Radioactive Water? How's about we wait few generations, and drink it! This is child's play next to the real problems posed by long lived (400K+ year long half life) bio-accumulating isotope disposal. I wouldn't mind if they dumped it in the ocean TBH.
- mirimir 11y agoThey're going to run out of room for tanks. And there must be access, because the tanks are going to rust out, and will need replaced. So storing the Tritium-contaminated water for a century or so is nontrivial.
- Lazare 11y agoAgain, we're talking about something which is maybe 5 million becquerels per litre, but if it was only 10,000 becquerels per litre, we could just drink the damn stuff. So if you diluted it all 500 times, the problem goes away. 620,000 tons of water is about...2 supertankers. So if you mixed it with 1000 supertankers worth of water, you could safely drink it (at least as far as the tritium is concerned). Now, where near Fukishima could we find 1000 supertankers worth of water? Right, the ocean. tdy721 wasn't joking; dumping it all into the ocean is a perfectly sensible (and safe) solution. (Although as the article notes, it's politically a non-starter.)
- mirimir 11y agoFrom an ISU site, I get that natural tritium production is ~4E6 Ci (~1.5E17 Bq) per year (from cosmic rays) and that the global steady-state inventory is ~7E7 Ci (~2.7E18 Bq).[0] From the Nautilus article, I get that there is now ~6E5 Mg contaminated water, containing 1E6-5E6 Bq tritium per liter. The overall range is ~6E14 Bq to 3E15 Bq, or between ~0.4% and ~2% of annual natural production. So yes, it's not such a big deal. But now I'm curious about the magnitude of other anthropogenic sources. [0] http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/tritium.htm http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/tritium.htm
- grecy 11y agoWhat I learned during the Fukushima disaster and ongoing clean up is that the human race literally has no plan or technology to deal with things when nuclear plants go bad. I'm not anti-nuclear by any stretch, but it boggles my mind that we just stood around and said "well, shit. We don't have a backup plan, and we're stuck with this for a very, very long time".
- toomuchtodo 11y agoSame here! I argue constantly for wind and solar instead of nuclear not because nuclear is a bad technology, but we are bad as a species at managing it. EDIT: It takes 10-20 years to get a nuclear generation plant built, starting at $1 billion USD, and I've never seen a wind turbine or solar panel need to be kept cool for days after having moderator rods dropped to prevent fuel rods from melting down and hydrogen gas destroying a pressured containment vessel. Don't talk to me about thorium, MSRs, breeders, or whatever new fangled reactor is being pushed this year unless you're willing to guarantee with incredibly steep financial penalties that if you start building a reactor today, you will be done on time, and within your budget. Otherwise, move out of the way while we build out solar, wind, and utility-scale battery storage, all proven to work with existing tech, needing no liability waivers from the government nor permanent spent fuel storage that doesn't (and won't ever) exist.
- tdy721 11y agoManage it, we barely understand it! The Strong and Weak fields are Klingon Poetry next to the scripture that describes Gravity and Electromagnetism.
- gregor7777 11y agoBig fan of this post
- jebblue 11y agoAgreed, the Sun is a massive power we also still don't fully understand, is mostly safe and has all the energy humans will ever need (IMO); we just need to strive at understanding it and how to harness it better.
- myrandomcomment 11y agoAh, the age old dumbasses that think the world nuclear is bad. At the current contamination level of the water, dump it in the ocean. No one will notice. It is water and alpha decay.
- lsiebert 11y agoTritium is actually useful for luminescent devices like emergency exit signs. Which now that I think about it, is a little ironic.
- curtis 11y agoActually, you may be on to something. According to Wikipedia, Tritium is worth $30,000 per gram [1]. I can only assume that we can separate super-heavy water (T20) from regular water since we can separate heavy water (D20) from regular water. I don't know if $30K per gram is enough to cover the separation cost, but it seems like it might... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Self-powered_lighting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Self-powered_lighting
- mcv 11y agoIf Fukushima produces Tritium at such an alarming pace, I wonder if it could tank the world Tritium market. How much Tritium does the world really need?
- sixdimensional 11y agoAre there any bacteria that consume tritium? A quick google search of "tritium bacteria" shows some relationship between bacteria and tritium - in some cases it kills bacteria and in others, there are bacteria that can consume it. For example: "Possible use of A̲l̲c̲a̲l̲i̲g̲e̲n̲e̲s̲ p̲a̲r̲a̲d̲o̲x̲u̲s̲ as a biological monitor"
- j-pb 11y agoThe bacteria might be able to harness some energy from radioactive decay, but it won't speed up that process. Afaik, chemical processes should have zero effect on the decay rate.
- logfromblammo 11y agoUm... how about separate out the tritium? It goes for like $30k per gram, doesn't it? Corner the self-illuminated exit sign market!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- kijin 11y agoAccording to this [1], the amount of tritium that currently exists in Fukushima is no more than 4 grams. At first I thought that might have been a unit conversion error, but Wolfram Alpha [2] seems to confirm the tiny mass. So if it costs more than $120k to separate it from the rest of the water, it would not be worth the effort. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Fukushima_Daiichi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Fukushima_Daiichi [2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mass+of+1+petabecquerel+of+tritium http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mass+of+1+petabecquerel...
- maerF0x0 11y agoIt's worth the effort if (Cost of extraction -$120k) < (Next best solution) ie, if the next best is to store it, and it would cost $1M. but filtration costs $1.1M , its actually $20k better to filter it.
- logfromblammo 11y ago4 grams tritium in 620000 tons of water, though? Seems like the politically expedient thing to do would be to separate a few tons to show that someone is doing something, and smuggle the rest out in ballast tanks.
- mcv 11y agoWhere does the self-powered light industry get their tritium? If they normally get it from sea water, it's probably easier for them to get it from this water instead.
- savage_platypus 11y agoNuclear has a lot to learn from the oil and gas industry, especially that dilution is the solution to pollution.
- astrodust 11y agoYeah, the Gulf is going just great.
- mkandes 11y ago"Dilute the son of a bitch."
- mcv 11y agoIsn't tritium useful for nuclear fusion? Can't they give it to some experimental fusion plants?
- zamalek 11y agoInstead of trying to find out what to do to dispose of it, couldn't we possibly find a use for it?
- rip747 11y agomaybe I'm missing something. Is there any reason why they couldn't just pop the lids off the tanks and let nature do what it does, evaporate the water. Figure it could take a couple of years or so for all the water to evaporate and at the same time rain water would dilute whatever is in there.
- jkyle 11y agoWe could feed to lizards and moths and stuff. That always seems to turn out well in the movies.
- jbert 11y agoDoes it have to be an open system? Can't the already-contaminated water be used for cooling in a mostly-closed system? And if the expansion due to rainwater is significant, perhaps some kind of large tent arrangement?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mkesper 11y agoAlso, this blocks very very many resources of Japan for tens of years trying to decontaminate the land. Look here (original german, but the texts might be usable): https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Freportage.wdr.de%2Ffukushima https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=h...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- brianwawok 11y agoDoes tritium evaporate? Or could we condense all the tanks from say 1 million gallons of water + 1 pound of tritium, down to say 100 gallons of water and 1 pound of tritium? Seems the volume of water is what makes it tricky, not the actual tritium.
- MichaelCrawford 11y agoWhat the US Navy actually does with its spent reactor coolant, is to make concrete out of it. The concrete as well as the mixer are buried at Hanford. I don't see why Japan couldn't do the same. I expect it already does this, with the coolant from its other reactors. The water used to mix cement doesn't evaporate, that is cement doesn't dry, it sets or hardens. The binder is a chemical known as "Portland Cement"; it hardens when it combines chemically with water.
- csense 11y agoThe tanks aren't endless compared to the ocean. Just dump it in the middle of the Pacific or something.
- pvaldes 11y agoOkay, maybe its time to clear some things. 1- "Even better, it does not bio-accumulate, because it's water". Myth: First of all tritium is not water, is radioactive hydrogen. Hydrogen is a common piece in the metabolism of all living beings. "The study showed that inorganic tritium accumulated differentially in mussel tissues in a dose-dependent manner, with the gut accumulating the highest amount of radioactivity, followed by the gill, mantle, muscle, foot and byssus thread". -> Awadhesh, Dogra, Turner, Millward (2005) Impact of low doses of tritium on the marine mussel, Mytilus edulis: Genotoxic effects and tissue-specific bioconcentration. Mutation Research/Genetic Toxicology and Environmental Mutagenesis. 586, 1: 47–57 -> Inomata T (1983). Accumulation and lethal effect of tritium (tritiated water) in Rhodopseudomonas spheroides. Under light-anaerobic and dark-aerobic conditions. Radiat Environ Biophys. 21(4):281-94. -> Inomata T, Higuchi M. (1976) Incorporation of tritium into cell materials of Rhodopseudomonas spheroides from tritiated water in the medium under aerobic conditions. J Biochem. 80(3):569-78. 2- "Tritium is safe to drink if diluted". True. But dangerous if eaten (and marine organisms can also pick up and reconcentrate again some substances). Japanese eat marine fishes, algae and clams all the time. "Our results demonstrated that the dose calculation based on tissue-free-water tritium alone would under-estimate the radiation exposure of the human population exposed to tritiated food" -> Komatsu, Okumura and Sakamoto (1990) Radiation dose to mouse liver cells from ingestion of tritiated food or water. Health Phys. 58(5):625-9. 3- "Tritium radioactivity is blocked just by a sheet of paper or by the skin" Paper's blocking properties are not relevant under the sea. Human skin is not comparable to the structure or function of fish/crab/worm gills. 4- "Hundred kilos of tritium were released and nothing happened" The fact is that hundred kilos of tritium where released and dozen of species of corals (and all its associated fauna) are missing still 50 years later from this area. This can be related with tritium or not, but "absence of evidence" can not be granted "as evidence of absence". Is a common rule in science. It only takes to briefly loose all its zooxanthellae to kill a 1000 years coral colony. 5- "Tritium don't have any efect in the marine organisms". "Nobody will be harmed" Myth: "Tritiated water delivering dose rates below 500 μGy h−1 was shown to be capable of inducing genetic damage in the haemocytes of edible mussels" "Despite growing scientific, public and regulatory concern over the discharge of radioactive substances, no serious attempts have been made to develop a rationale to evaluate the impact of environmentally relevant radionuclides in the aquatic environment." ... "The study suggests that the generic dose limits recommended by the International Atomic Energy Agency for the protection of aquatic biota might not be applicable to all aquatic organisms". -> Awadhesh, Dogra, Turner, Millward (2005) Impact of low doses of tritium on the marine mussel, Mytilus edulis: Genotoxic effects and tissue-specific bioconcentration. Mutation Research/Genetic Toxicology and Environmental Mutagenesis. 586, 1: 47–57 New marine organisms are discovered every year. We just don't know the effect of tritium on most marine organisms, specially with critical groups like sea cucumbers (that process tons of silt and sand each year), sponges and filterer worms (millions of water liters processed), or coral zooxanthellae. 6- "Come on, its only four grams... what could be happen?" Many things, this four grams could cause a serious damage to the credibility of the acuaculture japanese companies and to cultured shellfish, oysters and clams as source of reliable food for example. The value of total japanese aquaculture production in 2003 worth US$ 4 428 962 000 (source: FAO). Fish related economy is a 'no joke' affair for japanese employing a lot of people and moving big money each year so this would be also a political suicide probably. The impact of tritium in fish eggs, alaskan cods, right whales or californian vaquita porpoises is totally unknown. 7- "Again, there's still no theory as to how tritium can do all this crazy stuff". False: Tritium effects are similar to other typical carcinogenetic substances. On mice: abort of some mice embrios, increased mortality, bone marrow failure, resorbtion of gonadal tissue and developping of solid tumours. It depends on the dose. "mice receiving a single intraperitoneal injection of tritiated water 7.4 x 10(8) Bq (20 mCi) died of bone marrow failure within 20 days". -> Seyama, Yamamoto, Kinomura and Yokoro (1991) Carcinogenic effects of tritiated water (HTO) in mice: in comparison to those of neutrons and gamma-rays. J Radiat Res. 32 Suppl 2:132-42. 8- "The early 1960s (which saw peak tritium levels) are not known for a huge spike in inexplicable extinction events". Myth (and not understanding how things really work in biology). To prove extinction in marine organisms is notoriously difficult and in any case it takes 50 years to declare a species extinct. Therefore species extinct in 1960 are recognised as this by science in 2010, not in 1960. And the fact also is that not enought research had be done. There is about 800 living hard corals providing support for 4.000 species of reef fishes, more than 50.000 species of marine molluscs, and 13.800 species only in the Class Polychaeta (a type of marine worms). Scientists estimate total number of different species inhabiting coral reefs between 2 and 9 millions. We are talking just of reef ecosystems here, there are also soft bottom ecosystems and epi/meso pelagic and abyssal plains. Most of the marine species are still undiscovered. However, in years as recent as 2004 the World Conservation Union (IUCN) had conducted threat assessments of only 814 marine species (Baillie et al. 2004). The real situation of millions of species is unknown.