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Japan Power

Why South Koreans Are Rushing To Stockpile Sea Salt (independent.co.uk) 89

Posted by EditorDavid from the what's-shaking dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader beforewisdom shared this report from the Independent: South Koreans have begun to hoard excessive amounts of sea salt and other items as Japan prepares to dump treated radioactive water from the Fukushima power plant into the ocean... Tokyo has repeatedly assured that the water is safe and has been filtered to remove most isotopes though it does contain traces of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen hard to separate from water.

Although Japan has not set a date for the release, the announcement has made fishermen and shoppers across the region apprehensive. South Korea's fisheries authorities have vowed to ramp up efforts to monitor natural salt farms for any rise in radioactive substances and maintain a ban on seafood from the waters near Fukushima... The panic buying has led to a 27 per cent rise in the price of salt in South Korea in June from two months ago, though officials say the weather and lower production were also to blame. The Korean government in response has decided to release about 50 metric tons of salt a day from stocks, at a 20 per cent discount from market prices, until 11 July...

More than 85 per cent of the South Korean public oppose Japan's plan, according to a survey last month by local pollster Research View. Seven in 10 people reportedly said that they would consume less seafood if the waste water release goes ahead.
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Why South Koreans Are Rushing To Stockpile Sea Salt More

Why South Koreans Are Rushing To Stockpile Sea Salt

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  • Just go with the glow, I mean flow (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Sunday July 09, 2023 @12:42PM (#63671043) Journal

    a glow-in-the-dark wanker is hell cool. In fact, it's the only cool thing about me.

  • The general public are ill informed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Sunday July 09, 2023 @12:44PM (#63671051)

    This is depressingly true. Given the breakdown in trust between governed and leaders, there are no obvious answers. Although the 'John Gummer' solution of inviting the TV cameras to see you feed the suspect material to your toddler (in that case British beef in the days of NewVCJ disease is impressive, too many won't believe it's legit.

    It should be possible to explain just how little radioactivity will increase in ocean sea water and why it's not worth getting excited about. There's a serious PR project for someone...

    • I mean i'd do it but no one knows who I am.

      • If that water is so safe why don't they keep it in a storage facility near the diet ( their parliament )?

        • Re:If it is so safe... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by HBI ( 10338492 ) on Sunday July 09, 2023 @01:32PM (#63671173)

          Concentrating beta emissions near the Diet building probably wouldn't be that much of a problem. With that said, you spread it out more and it is even less significant. Tritium has a half-life of a little over 12 years. There was quite a bit of it in the environment from above-ground nuclear tests, and there is definitely more on Earth in the environment than there was before nuclear tests started, but it was always present. You drank some today, almost assuredly.

          It doesn't require being a physicist to understand tritium. I don't get the know-nothingism today about these matters. I mean if someone was suggesting you drink a short half-life gamma emitter, that would be a different story, but that is not the case here.

          • The last above ground test was 1980, so over 40 years ago, 3 half-lives, so 1/8 of what there once was.

            The last US above ground test was 1962, so 60 years ago, 5 half-lives, so only 1/32 of that is left.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              The last above ground test was 1980, so over 40 years ago, 3 half-lives, so 1/8 of what there once was.

              The last US above ground test was 1962, so 60 years ago, 5 half-lives, so only 1/32 of that is left.

              Or eat a banana, potato, some Brazil nuts [wikipedia.org]....

          • People don't trust Tepco because they time they issue a statement, it's a lie.

            People don't trust the Japanese government because they keep backing up Tepco.

            Believing that Tepco is only going to be emitting Tritium is based on trusting Tepco. Why do you trust Tepco?

            https://www.cbc.ca/news/busine... [www.cbc.ca]
            https://joi.ito.com/weblog/200... [ito.com]
            https://japantoday.com/categor... [japantoday.com]

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by HBI ( 10338492 )

              If society is trust-free, there is no point in even having discussions.

              • If society is trust-free, there is no point in even having discussions.

                There is no point in having discussions about Fukushima with anyone who trusts any statement issued by Tepco. They have proven that they are insufficiently discerning to have an opinion worth listening to. On the other hand, they're ideal people to involve in a scheme requiring dupes.

        • Actually, there are radioactive bricks made from the spoilings of a uranium mine used around the Diet building, and there is a web site that sells them. This is an article about said bricks [archive.org].

    • I'd focus more on the fact that when you've extracted sea salt, it won't contain any tritium at all.

      • Sure won't. But it'll contain other radioactive isotopes. So.. bonus, I guess?

        If you're concerned about trace amounts of radiation... don't eat sea salt.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ve3oat ( 884827 )
      If this little bit of tritium in seawater is seen by ill-informed people as such a threat, I wonder what they think of the growing threat from microplastics.
      I guess those people haven't been informed about microplastics yet.
      • it seems unlikely that people are worried about tritium in salt, given that the salt would contain only trace amounts of hydrogen from contaminants. It seems more likely that Koreans just don't trust the Japanese, and the claim that tritium is the only thing left in the water. This shouldn't be surprising, with their antagonistic history.

        • A little hard to blame them given what happened. Pearl harbor was barely a slap on the hand in comparison to what they got.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Even the Japanese don't trust the Japanese government or TEPCO on this. They mis-handled the situation from before the accident even happened, and are clearly motivated by not wanting to be sued even more. They also failed several times to decontaminate nearby towns, and in some cases the problems were only discovered by citizens with Geiger counters.

      • It doesn't work like that (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Sunday July 09, 2023 @04:15PM (#63671663)

        Panics like this are driven by activists who live by the fear they generate causing people to contribute to their cause. Radioactivity is scary - so it is an easy target to frighten people about - and activists have been digging at that sore for decades. Note also that China is stirring the pot because it allows them to score points over Japan, despite its being invalid science. Let's not be surprised...

        By contrast microplastics is a new threat which has not yet gained the traction in the activist world for them to have the enthusiasm to start talking about it a lot. As a result it's getting far less attention than it deserves - not least because all the available attention is focused on radioactivity. Yes, this is a disaster in the making possibly, but you can't expect activists to abandon the cause that keeps them fed for new issues that won't get them fed.

        There are days when I hope I'm wrong...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KlomDark ( 6370 )
        Oooooh, microplastics, scawwy scawwy stuff! Muahahaha! So stupid... Other than the type of plastic that leaches estrogen, I haven't seen anything solidly dangerous, just headless chickens running around.

  • Same old, same old (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fatwilbur ( 1098563 ) on Sunday July 09, 2023 @12:58PM (#63671083)
    Mention the word “nuclear” and those without solid physics education become driven by fear. It’s fun to watch in an otherwise intelligent or educated person, because they start making ridiculous arguments against nuclear power or safe activities like this. I hope nobody ever tells them about bananas, or worse, flying in an airplane.

    Honestly, I hate to judge in such a fashion, but the anti-nuclear crowd is becoming a real roadblock in the advancement of our society and lowering of our carbon emissions.
    • Absolutely. I don't have a physics degree, but know enough through learning about engineering, and learning on my own that the real future is with nuclear. The amount of radiation being discussed is so minute, that it won't even register. The rise in background radiation around the plant has been reported as not much more then a few hours on an airplane aggregated over a year. This isn't Chernobyl, nor anything like it, and the fear mongering needs to stop. That isn't to say that there aren't better de

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      You are right. It is really tough to be against nuclear power and hear such uninformed drivel from people on the same side.

      Nuclear power is almost safe, and I would MUCH rather have my house next to a nuclear power plant than say an oil refinery. If the nuclear power plant goes boom, I may have to move, but I will almost certainly not die from it. Nuclear waste has the unique property of going away if you ignore it long enough, unlike lead or PFAS or any number of other exciting pollutants we have managed t

      • If the nuclear power plant goes boom, I may have to move, but I will almost certainly not die from it.

        No, if it goes "boom" you are very likely to die from it or at least have a much shorter life. The point is that it is basically impossible for a modern nuclear power plant to go "boom" - even if the inner reactor somehow manages it (which itself is practically impossible) there is a secondary containment building so still no boom. It is so unlikely that if you worry about that then you should be absolutely panic-stricken about the threat from asteroid impacts.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by amorsen ( 7485 )

          The vast majority of people who lived near Chernobyl or Fukushima at the time survived and did not have their lives shortened. Now you can say that those two didn't go boom, but that is as boom as a nuclear power plant can realistically go.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      You forget that this is the result of an accident that "could not happen". Yes, releasing this water into the ocean is not problematic. But the plants this water comes form are proof of lying, unsafe operation and general greedy fuckery in the nuclear power industry. I also bet that this accident alone will cost a lot more to clean up than all profits from nuclear power Japan ever had in its history. If they ever had profits, the nuclear industry is notorious for lying about its costs.

    • Mention the word "nuclear" and those without solid physics education become driven by fear.

      I agree with you, and yet I can't blame the public. As another poster noted, the public's trust in their government(s) have been much eroded as of late. And in the case of nuclear waste, all of the following applies:

      • You can't see, hear, or feel it.
      • It's nigh impossible to estimate effects of any intake.
      • You can't personally check what happens at point of release (pipe into the ocean).
      • And yes you can measure things, but dude in the street doesn't have gear like Geiger counters or mass spectrometers lying arou

  • Missing the bigger news story - North Korea (Score:3)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday July 09, 2023 @12:59PM (#63671089)

    Apparently North Korea has called on the international community to stop the release. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/0... [cnn.com]

    North Korea. International community. This is significant because it shows that they are deluded enough to think that anyone in the international community will give even a micro-iota of a fuck about what North Korea thinks.

    I actually wonder if this is a false flag operation to turn the entire event into a parody so people can laugh it off.

  • It's Tritium, not Radon or Uranium (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blastard ( 816262 ) on Sunday July 09, 2023 @01:15PM (#63671133)

    The Beta particles from it can't even get past the dead skin cells on your hand if they make it that far. The low energy of the Beta particle means it generally can't get past 6mm of air. Additionally, Tritium has a half life of less than 12 and a half years. So, it will be around for a while, but not thousands of years. If this stuff was truly a major hazard, Amazon probably would not allow it to be sold so freely. Look up Tritium gun sites and watches and even necklaces.

    You wouldn't want to be releasing this stuff every day of every year and say there is nothing to it, but a diluted discharge over a short period is nothing to get so worked up about. While I am not a fan of whataboutism, it is worth considering that we don't have too much outcry over the radioactive compounds in coal ash. Interestingly, the EPA website doesn't have much good information, but the Oak Ridge National Laboratory does. And, ORNL talks about how "For the year 1982, assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively, each typical plant released 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons of thorium that year."

    Please look up information and figure out what you really should be worried about.

    • It's tritium and Carbon-14, which they are drinking and breathing every day of their life anyway.

    • The Beta particles from it can't even get past the dead skin cells on your hand if they make it that far.

      True, but the danger with tritium is that, as an isotope of hydrogen, it is chemically very active and can easily get incorporated into your body if you are exposed to it. Then it does not have to get past any skin cells. However, it is ridiculous to stockpile sea salt which, because the water is evaporated, will contain no tritium but it will contain lots of naturally occurring, radioactive potassium-40 which emits beta radiation that easily has enough energy to get through your skin every time you visit

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Tritium in products like gun sights is safe because you don't put gun sights inside your body.

      Tritium inside the body, carried in by water, is dangerous. There are protocols for handling it, basically flush your body by consuming as much water as possible. You need to consume quite a lot of tritium for it to present a significant risk, and it typically only spends a few weeks in you even if you don't flush, but it is still a real thing.

      The levels in the water at Fukushima should be completely safe, IF they

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KlomDark ( 6370 )
        Sounds like Koreans need to grow up and realize they haven't fought with Japanese Samurai in a long long time.
  • With Japan having record population loss they should buy up an abandoned village and store the water tanks there.

  • Sure radioactive stuff can be bad for your health, but so can non-radioactive stuff. California is full of sites contaminated with arsenic and mercury from gold rush era and who knows what from manufacturing plants. There are many does and don't about eating locally caught fish - what kind, how much, which parts, not when pregnant and so on. On the other hand, the issue is always concentration - topsoil in Chernobyl, a lake in California. When same things are diluted in enormous 3d volume of ocean, it does

  • The difference between a country like Japan compared to China is that Japan actually has transparency when they do things like this. China would have just done it without telling anyone, without caring what anyone thought. That is why one of the major trash disposal methods in China is to simply haul barges of trash out into the ocean and dump them. You don't think that there are any toxic chemicals in all of those millions of tons of trash?

  • Mindless panic (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday July 09, 2023 @02:45PM (#63671405)

    There is a lot wrong with nuclear power (with a list basically too long to give here by now), but specifically this water release is not a problem. Of course what causes the need for this water release is a hugely expensive nuclear mess caused by shoddy planning, schoddy engineering and doing things cheaper than possible. The whole Fukushima disaster is an object lesson why the nuclear industry cannot be trusted to do things right.

    That said, please, people, protest what is actually wrong with nuclear power. There is so much to choose from and so much of it is so very, very, wrong. Why the hell are you protesting one of the few things that are actually not a problem?

    • People find it easier to react to one specific event than something ongoing with the status quo. People generally don't want to show up month after month, year after year for each regulatory board meeting, unless they're getting paid a salary.

      And if someone did want to protest at each meeting of the regulatory body, he'd be the lone "crazy guy" sitting out there. He'd have a stack of pamphlets printed up with the solution to the energy crisis and global warming, and nobody would read it.

      Probably he gets arr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        People find it easier to react to one specific event than something ongoing with the status quo.

        True. And probably one of the main reasons why so many things are so fucked up.

  • Dear South-Coreans (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday July 09, 2023 @03:19PM (#63671489)

    Sea-salt is full of microplastics, even the expensive Fleur de Sel, you can SEE the plastic fibers with a magnifying glass, if they're blue or red, even with the naked eye.

    Use rock-salt instead, it was a few million years old before plastic was invented.

  • No water, no Tritium. (Score:3)

    by PinkyGigglebrain ( 730753 ) on Sunday July 09, 2023 @04:13PM (#63671659)

    Dried and refined sea salt doesn't have any water in it. OK, yeah, a tiny trace but if your really going to be paranoid just put the salt in the oven for a hour or two at 250F to drive out the minuscule amount of water present. Probably going to be a market soon for kiln dried sea salt, 100% water free.

    Given the amounts of Tritium involved and the shear volume of the ocean the water from Fukushima will be diluted in If I was going to worry about minor radiation sources that might cause me issues at some point 20-30 years down the road I'll stress out about the Carbon 14 in just about EVERYTHING around me. Even with the difference in half-life from Tritium there is way more of C14 in the local environment and the Beta radiation released when C14 decays is something like 50 times more energetic over Tritium's Beta decay product.

    • It is refreshing that by and large, the posters here on slashdot get that this is a non-issue in the grand scheme of things.

    • Not in my backyard so I think those people are being irrational about their backyard. It's not like radiation works it's way up the food chain and concentrates near the top and it's not like humans are at the top of the food chain. So it's not a real problem... besides if 1000 people get cancer over the next few decades, it's like winning the lottery that you'll be one of them and they won't likely even have data with a low enough margin of error to prove anything; especially in court. Say you do, be happy

  • But what about all the other toxic crap (literally and figuratively) that gets pumped into the ocean on a daily basis?

  • Why don't they just load water into large tankers, go out to sea away from major land masses, and then dump the water there? Sure, it would have additional costs, but nothing compared to the bad PR this move is getting.

  • 11 out of 10 people lack statistics knowledge.

  • Meanwhile, they are literally eating significant amounts of radioactive fly ash from the eleventybillion coal fired power plants in China, right next door. Nothing like a little Thorium and Uranium to spice things up. Half-life of Tritium is about 12yrs. Half-life of Thorium is 14.05 billion years...

    • Meanwhile, they are literally eating significant amounts of radioactive fly ash from the eleventybillion coal fired power plants in China, right next door. Nothing like a little Thorium and Uranium to spice things up. Half-life of Tritium is about 12yrs. Half-life of Thorium is 14.05 billion years...

      Not sure that comparison does what you think it does. The shorter the half-life an isotope has, the more radioactive it is. Something with a half-life of 14B years is extremely safe, unless it's dangerous because of its chemical properties. Something with a half-life of 12 years could be dangerous in sufficient quantity and depending on what particles it emits and in what context. Tritium happens not to be very dangerous because the beta particles it emits can't penetrate the skin, and even if ingested it d

  • I have a feeling that despite all efforts and testing, the day they release the water to sea, million of marine lives end up dead, thousands of people get sick across SEAN and Japan is gonna pay tens of billions of dollars, and ASEAN government officials will take all that money, nothing will be paid to victims. I saw this with a Taiwanese company called Formosa who released factory waste water to sea, killed 100 tons of fishes, poisoned hundreds of victims and paid only $300M of fines, while no victims got

  • The number of people who died as a direct result of the Fukushima Daiichi accident is around 50 ... all of who died due to being evacuated ... ....it will be very difficult to even measure the radiation in the seawater it's that low ...

    But since it *Nuclear* and *Radiation* it *must* be deadly and scary ... ... Meanwhile there are people still living in Pripyat ...

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