6 ms·

So lets make a kickstarter to build tanks. This doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve.

tptacek 11y ago
Why is it a good idea to store it concentrated in tanks, rather than just diluting it out in the ocean? It seems like we're spending a lot of energy just to hold on to this stuff in the riskiest possible way.
- pvaldes 11y ago
  Is a good idea because in the ocean will harm the main source of food of Japanese people, spreading food panic. And because in the ocean will harm fishes, shellfishes, corals, other valuable forms of life; and there is no more than 50 living japanese right whales in all the planet. And because the main species targeted by fisheries in all the planet earth is the peruvian anchovy. Since Fukushima we are seeing some strange death mass events of non human anchovy eaters like sea birds, seals and whales from Alaska to Peru. The cat's food tin that we open in our kitchens is made of peruvian anchovies flour. Your beloved pets will have more probabilities to die from cancer. And because there are maybe thousands of cases of TEPCO shamelesly saying: 'oops, hundreds of liters of our radioactive waste are dumped to the sea again, how bad luck' since 2011. We simply can not expect them to act responsibly after repeatedly lied everybody in the past. They will use this easy way out to quickly dump anything they want to the water ("oops we forget again to classify and separate radioactive atoms from the water dumped. Is such an expensive process... how bad luck") And because all oceans are connected by sea currents and radioactivity travelling with currents and migratory fishes will reach American coasts in a few weeks. And because animals are made of water in a 60-95%. There is much more water than fat in a human. And rain is made of water also. And because this is not a game of probabilities. To have only a chance of 1% of finding a tiger is not the same idea as "this tiger is 99% harmless".
  - s_kilk 11y ago
    Will it actually harm anything in the ocean though? From the analysis above it looks like this stuff is harmless once sufficiently diluted.
    - sp332 11y ago
      Those are the numbers for human safety, not plankton (which are smaller and more vulnerable to chemical damage) or sharks and whales (who are bigger and would be exposed to more radiation overall).
  - tptacek 11y ago
    The fact that there is so much water in animals is one of the reasons tritiated water isn't that dangerous. It's not really possible to discuss something if the only acceptable answer is "fuck TEPCO", by the way.
    - pvaldes 11y ago
      This is not about 'fuck TEPCO', is about 'Should we trust still in what TEPCO says?'. There is a well documented chain of lies, accidents, and surrealistic mistakes from this company in the last four years. I don't know enough about the claimed process of purification so I could be wrong, but I'm understanding by the article that tons of radioactive saltwater are magically converted in yummy distilled water and that tritium is the only cause of concern. It reminds me the same old rethoric: "they are clever, they know how to do this, don't make questions, nature will gobble the problem and we all will be safe and happy again". I think that is reasonable to be sceptic in this case. Are we talking about to dump distilled pure water or saltwater to the sea?. Is a different situation. It is saltwater there is a lot of things about to care, not just hydrogen. What happened with the dissolved salts and organic matter in the radioactive saltwater?. And of course, how we could control the real composition of the dumped water?. Just because TEPCO promises us that this time is safe?. This is also a legitimate question. Are we just sending a clear message of 'do as you please with the waste'?. This could be a huge mistake in my opinion.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        I don't trust TEPCO at all. I'm interested in the discussion we're actually capable of having: if you have a large and growing number of tanks full of tritiated water, is it better to store them aboveground, or dump them in the ocean?
        pvaldes 11y ago
        To dump them in the ocean is irreversible and basically unpredictable. Maybe could entirely wipe species that filter the water, like the right whales. Maybe could create malformations in cod eggs for example, leading to a small percentage of surviving cod larvae. As we need thousands of eggs to have a single adult cod this could quickly escalate to the entire collapse of the population. All commercial fish species and fishing grounds are currently under a big (increasing) pressure by fishermen so this is not a good moment to do this experiment. There is available space in Fukushima for more tanks. Nobody lives in the area and if properly designed to be durable seems a safer option. We have the technology to design such containers.
  - Lazare 11y ago
    Oh come on, we're talking about 4 grams of tritium. Hydrogen bomb tests are estimated to have created several hundred kilograms of tritium, the bulk of which went straight into the oceans. No impact on sea life has been measured. You list a parade of horribles, but the cold fact is that there is no theory as to how any of those even might occur. Anchovies are not going to die because of a couple grams of tritium. Nor will your cat get cancer. Radiation is not magic, nor is a taboo. It's a physical phenomenon with well understood characteristics. (And, again, even if you're right—and the entire scientific community is wrong—if 4 grams of tritium would do all that, what do you think the hundreds of kilos from nuclear tests did?) Cite: http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=2330 http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=2330
    - pvaldes 11y ago
      > Hydrogen bomb tests are estimated to have created several hundred kilograms of tritium, the bulk of which went straight into the oceans. No impact on sea life has been measured. This is just wishfull thinking. A clear and well documented impact on sea life with a lot of local extinctions can be easily checked still 50 years later, in fact. Nothing growing in the island is safe to eat currently. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080415101021.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080415101021.ht...
      - tptacek 11y ago
        None of this has anything to do with tritium, which is not a gamma emitter.
      - Lazare 11y ago
        We're talking specifically about tritium. Under normal circumstances, there's maybe 4 kilograms on the Earth's surface. The nuclear tests increased that by multiple orders of magnitude, ejecting hundreds of kilograms into the stratosphere, whereupon it promptly precipitated back out into the earth's oceans. 1) Your link does not discuss tritium. Tritium is a specific substance with specific characteristics; you can't just lump it all under "Evil Radiation" and make meaningful conclusions. 2) Whatever effect tritium would have would be global. You talk about local extinctions, but we're actually looking for evidence of massive global extinctions. The early 1960s (which saw peak tritium levels) are not known for a huge spike in inexplicable extinction events. 3) Not only did the tests spread it everywhere, but ongoing runoff means that rivers have been pumping tritium into delta regions. Almost a kilogram of tritium was pumped into the Gulf of Mexico over the last 50 years. Again, no impacts from the tritium have been detected; whatever impact it might have had was drowned out by all the other much more serious crap we humans were doing. 4) Again, there's still no theory as to how tritium (specifically tritium, and not, eg, radioactive cesium or iodine) might do all this crazy stuff. I'm just pointing out that there's also no emperical evidence either, and thus, no real reason to think our entire understanding of how radiation impacts living organisms is wrong. All of which means that people worried about the impacts of 4 grams of tritium on the Pacific Ocean are—to be charitable—innumerate. They're certainly wrong, because we've already dumped something like a HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES more tritium into the Pacific ocean than that, and we literally have been unable to detect any impact. It's absurd to think we could even measure the impact of 4 grams.
- nate_meurer 11y ago
  It's not a good idea. Tank storage is complicated; stratification and precipitation can cause criticality events at unpredictable moments. The 1958 criticality accident at Los Alamos was the result of merely turning on a mixer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Kelley_criticality_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Kelley_criticality_accid...
- Keyframe 11y ago
  Why is it a good idea to store it concentrated in tanks, rather than just diluting it out in the ocean? It has nothing to do with technical issues. Imagine the public reaction.
  - VLM 11y ago
    This is the fundamental problem that most pro-nuke people (such as myself) don't understand. In a world of ignorant people driven by mass media, reality no longer matters and can be avoided, must be avoided, until after it starts killing people. Until the last human dies of lung cancer from coal burning, we simply cannot have nukes, no matter how realistic the "star trek" outcome looks. Its a pity, I like nukes, because I like living.
- irishcoffee 11y ago
  Spend a kickstarter to dump it down a volcano then. The point I was trying to make (poorly, apparently) is that it's stupid that this is actually a problem at all, there seem to be a number of viable and cheap solutions.

Why is it a good idea to store it concentrated in tanks, rather than just diluting it out in the ocean? It seems like we're spending a lot of energy just to hold on to this stuff in the riskiest possible way.

pvaldes 11y ago
Is a good idea because in the ocean will harm the main source of food of Japanese people, spreading food panic. And because in the ocean will harm fishes, shellfishes, corals, other valuable forms of life; and there is no more than 50 living japanese right whales in all the planet. And because the main species targeted by fisheries in all the planet earth is the peruvian anchovy. Since Fukushima we are seeing some strange death mass events of non human anchovy eaters like sea birds, seals and whales from Alaska to Peru. The cat's food tin that we open in our kitchens is made of peruvian anchovies flour. Your beloved pets will have more probabilities to die from cancer. And because there are maybe thousands of cases of TEPCO shamelesly saying: 'oops, hundreds of liters of our radioactive waste are dumped to the sea again, how bad luck' since 2011. We simply can not expect them to act responsibly after repeatedly lied everybody in the past. They will use this easy way out to quickly dump anything they want to the water ("oops we forget again to classify and separate radioactive atoms from the water dumped. Is such an expensive process... how bad luck") And because all oceans are connected by sea currents and radioactivity travelling with currents and migratory fishes will reach American coasts in a few weeks. And because animals are made of water in a 60-95%. There is much more water than fat in a human. And rain is made of water also. And because this is not a game of probabilities. To have only a chance of 1% of finding a tiger is not the same idea as "this tiger is 99% harmless".
- s_kilk 11y ago
  Will it actually harm anything in the ocean though? From the analysis above it looks like this stuff is harmless once sufficiently diluted.
  - sp332 11y ago
    Those are the numbers for human safety, not plankton (which are smaller and more vulnerable to chemical damage) or sharks and whales (who are bigger and would be exposed to more radiation overall).
- tptacek 11y ago
  The fact that there is so much water in animals is one of the reasons tritiated water isn't that dangerous. It's not really possible to discuss something if the only acceptable answer is "fuck TEPCO", by the way.
  - pvaldes 11y ago
    This is not about 'fuck TEPCO', is about 'Should we trust still in what TEPCO says?'. There is a well documented chain of lies, accidents, and surrealistic mistakes from this company in the last four years. I don't know enough about the claimed process of purification so I could be wrong, but I'm understanding by the article that tons of radioactive saltwater are magically converted in yummy distilled water and that tritium is the only cause of concern. It reminds me the same old rethoric: "they are clever, they know how to do this, don't make questions, nature will gobble the problem and we all will be safe and happy again". I think that is reasonable to be sceptic in this case. Are we talking about to dump distilled pure water or saltwater to the sea?. Is a different situation. It is saltwater there is a lot of things about to care, not just hydrogen. What happened with the dissolved salts and organic matter in the radioactive saltwater?. And of course, how we could control the real composition of the dumped water?. Just because TEPCO promises us that this time is safe?. This is also a legitimate question. Are we just sending a clear message of 'do as you please with the waste'?. This could be a huge mistake in my opinion.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      I don't trust TEPCO at all. I'm interested in the discussion we're actually capable of having: if you have a large and growing number of tanks full of tritiated water, is it better to store them aboveground, or dump them in the ocean?
      - pvaldes 11y ago
        To dump them in the ocean is irreversible and basically unpredictable. Maybe could entirely wipe species that filter the water, like the right whales. Maybe could create malformations in cod eggs for example, leading to a small percentage of surviving cod larvae. As we need thousands of eggs to have a single adult cod this could quickly escalate to the entire collapse of the population. All commercial fish species and fishing grounds are currently under a big (increasing) pressure by fishermen so this is not a good moment to do this experiment. There is available space in Fukushima for more tanks. Nobody lives in the area and if properly designed to be durable seems a safer option. We have the technology to design such containers.
- Lazare 11y ago
  Oh come on, we're talking about 4 grams of tritium. Hydrogen bomb tests are estimated to have created several hundred kilograms of tritium, the bulk of which went straight into the oceans. No impact on sea life has been measured. You list a parade of horribles, but the cold fact is that there is no theory as to how any of those even might occur. Anchovies are not going to die because of a couple grams of tritium. Nor will your cat get cancer. Radiation is not magic, nor is a taboo. It's a physical phenomenon with well understood characteristics. (And, again, even if you're right—and the entire scientific community is wrong—if 4 grams of tritium would do all that, what do you think the hundreds of kilos from nuclear tests did?) Cite: http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=2330 http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=2330
  - pvaldes 11y ago
    > Hydrogen bomb tests are estimated to have created several hundred kilograms of tritium, the bulk of which went straight into the oceans. No impact on sea life has been measured. This is just wishfull thinking. A clear and well documented impact on sea life with a lot of local extinctions can be easily checked still 50 years later, in fact. Nothing growing in the island is safe to eat currently. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080415101021.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080415101021.ht...
    - tptacek 11y ago
      None of this has anything to do with tritium, which is not a gamma emitter.
    - Lazare 11y ago
      We're talking specifically about tritium. Under normal circumstances, there's maybe 4 kilograms on the Earth's surface. The nuclear tests increased that by multiple orders of magnitude, ejecting hundreds of kilograms into the stratosphere, whereupon it promptly precipitated back out into the earth's oceans. 1) Your link does not discuss tritium. Tritium is a specific substance with specific characteristics; you can't just lump it all under "Evil Radiation" and make meaningful conclusions. 2) Whatever effect tritium would have would be global. You talk about local extinctions, but we're actually looking for evidence of massive global extinctions. The early 1960s (which saw peak tritium levels) are not known for a huge spike in inexplicable extinction events. 3) Not only did the tests spread it everywhere, but ongoing runoff means that rivers have been pumping tritium into delta regions. Almost a kilogram of tritium was pumped into the Gulf of Mexico over the last 50 years. Again, no impacts from the tritium have been detected; whatever impact it might have had was drowned out by all the other much more serious crap we humans were doing. 4) Again, there's still no theory as to how tritium (specifically tritium, and not, eg, radioactive cesium or iodine) might do all this crazy stuff. I'm just pointing out that there's also no emperical evidence either, and thus, no real reason to think our entire understanding of how radiation impacts living organisms is wrong. All of which means that people worried about the impacts of 4 grams of tritium on the Pacific Ocean are—to be charitable—innumerate. They're certainly wrong, because we've already dumped something like a HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES more tritium into the Pacific ocean than that, and we literally have been unable to detect any impact. It's absurd to think we could even measure the impact of 4 grams.
nate_meurer 11y ago
It's not a good idea. Tank storage is complicated; stratification and precipitation can cause criticality events at unpredictable moments. The 1958 criticality accident at Los Alamos was the result of merely turning on a mixer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Kelley_criticality_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Kelley_criticality_accid...
Keyframe 11y ago
Why is it a good idea to store it concentrated in tanks, rather than just diluting it out in the ocean? It has nothing to do with technical issues. Imagine the public reaction.
- VLM 11y ago
  This is the fundamental problem that most pro-nuke people (such as myself) don't understand. In a world of ignorant people driven by mass media, reality no longer matters and can be avoided, must be avoided, until after it starts killing people. Until the last human dies of lung cancer from coal burning, we simply cannot have nukes, no matter how realistic the "star trek" outcome looks. Its a pity, I like nukes, because I like living.
irishcoffee 11y ago
Spend a kickstarter to dump it down a volcano then. The point I was trying to make (poorly, apparently) is that it's stupid that this is actually a problem at all, there seem to be a number of viable and cheap solutions.