Fukushima To Possibly Dump Radioactive Water Back Into Ocean (cnn.com) 314
omfglearntoplay shares a report from CNN: Eight years after Japan's worst nuclear disaster, the government is not sure what to do with the contaminated water that remains -- but its environment minister says dumping it into the ocean might be the only choice. To cool fuel cores at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, operator Tokyo Electric has pumped in tens of thousands of tons of water over the years, according to Japanese national broadcaster NHK. Once used and contaminated, the water is put into storage. Now, storage space is running out. And during a televised press conference Tuesday, Japan's environment minister Yoshiaki Harada said he believed the only solution was to "release it into the ocean and dilute it." "There are no other options," he said. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga emphasized that a decision has not yet been made. "There is no fact that the method of disposal of contaminated water has been decided," he said. "The government would like to make a decision after making thorough discussion."
Worst one? (Score:5, Funny)
So this nuclear disaster was worse than little boy and fat man?
Re:Worst one? (Score:4, Interesting)
But the OMG RADIATION! crowd doesn't care about actual risk.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, I'm not an expert in this, but can't you, you know, re-use the same water for cooling instead of always using new water? What's it going to do, irradiate the core?
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, I'm not an expert in this, but can't you, you know, re-use the same water for cooling instead of always using new water? What's it going to do, irradiate the core?
I believe a lot of it is incoming water from ground drainage. They may use some of it for cooling but probably not much is needed.
Re:Worst one? (Score:5, Insightful)
can't you, you know, re-use the same water for cooling instead of always using new water?
The water is recycled for multiple passes. But eventually it builds up enough gunk that it is too contaminated to run through the pumps. So it is diverted to storage.
In theory, many of the radioactive isotopes could be removed with osmotic filters, but there are no on-site facilities to do that, and even then it is not going to filter out tritium and other small elements.
10,000 cubic meters may sound like a lot of water, but it really isn't. There are oil tankers that can hold 300,000 cubic meters. One of those could hold all the waste water generated in a decade.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: Worst one? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its always a question of possible consequences and cost. If the release of this water would kill 0.3 people over the next 20 years but filtering it instead costs 10 millions for which you could build a hospital that would save 7 lives, then its not the ethical choice to filter.
Re: Worst one? (Score:2)
Then again releasing the tritium out into the ocean shouldn't be much risk anyway? Especially diluted.
Could even use the tanker approach and let it flow out all over the planet if they wanted to help mix it.
Re: (Score:2)
Tritium is a useful portable energy source, they shouldn't be dumping that in the ocean. They should be selling it!
Sure. There is only the minor issue of separating it from the other ten thousand tons of water mixed with radioactive sludge.
Re:Worst one? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need that many words to explain the reason, it's actually pretty easy: Dumping is cheaper.
Re: (Score:3)
According to TFA there was actually 800,000 cubic metres of water back in 2016, so presumably it's going to be vastly more than that now.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworl... [nhk.or.jp]
Re:Worst one? (Score:4, Insightful)
The water is filtered through multiple layers of resins and adsorbents, but they can't do anything about tritium, since it's chemically indistinguishable. Right now the water in tanks is just about 2 times more radioactive than legally allowed for discharge into the ocean.
They should just discharge it and stop the Kabuki theater that is Fukushima cleanup.
Re: (Score:3)
Ummm, not quite.
https://www7.tepco.co.jp/wp-co... [tepco.co.jp]
The slides are from last November and showed that there was still radioactive heating at that time, and Tepco was not sure how much debris cooling was needed.
I looked to see if there were published results of the tests but could not find them. I still believe that they are pumping water over the melted core to keep it cool.
In any case "long since cooled" is quite inaccurate.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
They should have been releasing it all along. No significant risk to environment or health, we are dumping much more, worse stuff in the oceans everyday.
"A" in science.
"F" in PR and marketing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They should have been releasing it all along. No significant risk to environment or health, we are dumping much more, worse stuff in the oceans everyday.
"A" in science. "F" in PR and marketing.
Oh so true. Unfortunately science loses to PR way too often.
Re:Worst one? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's not about whataboutism. It's about Tepco fucked up, now fix it without fucking up more.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a PR problem, it's a trust problem. TEPCO caused this mess, the government lied about it and told people everything was fine when it wasn't. The nuclear scientists who reassured everyone that the plant was safe and couldn't melt down or cause a 500 billion dollar disaster were wrong.
So now when they say that dumping the water is fine and you can still eat the fish caught in that area, once considered some of the best in Japan, people aren't going to take their word for it. They are just not going t
Re: (Score:2)
Found by accident, but I don't have a mod point to help your visibility. Anyway, largely in agreement with my longer comment written before I saw this one.
3 eyed fish by the plant is no issue (Score:2, Funny)
3 eyed fish by the plant is no issue
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It should be released in a sound manner. Which at the very least, means cooling the water to near freezing and feeding it into a very, very long hose, which will take the water far from the coast and down to very deep water. You could as an alternate, refurbish an oil tanker to take the water on, then cool it with mobile refrigeration and then have a very long hose to take the water to the sea floor. You could also run the water through a large scale centrifuges to settle all the heavier than normal water c
Re: (Score:2)
But..keeping the water in storage for as long as it has allows for more decay before the water is released.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you supply links to this claim that radiation is super safe? Or even just this waste water?
Here you go [xkcd.com].
Re: (Score:2)
While this xkcd is very interesting, it mixes doses over time. Daily and yearly dose examples sit next to each other as if they are reasonably equivalent.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with that graphic is that it only shows one-off event exposure levels. For example, it shows what you would receive while in the Fukushima evacuation zone, but it ignores the long term exposure from ingested isotopes that bioaccumulate in your body.
It also doesn't differentiate between types of exposure. Your skin and flesh block a lot of radiation and protect your organs. But again, if you ingest, those barriers are removed. That's why thyroid cancer is a common symptom of ingested radioactive
Re: (Score:2)
So, basically, at super low levels radiation is OK, duh. Now the level of the radiated water? Would you drink it?
The Pacific Ocean contains roughly 700 quadrillion cubic meters of water.
If the radiated water was diluted and mixed with the waters of the Pacific, I would be willing to drink it, swim in it, and eat fish from it.
I worry far more about lead and mercury from coal burning plants. That is an actual rational health concern. Since heavy metals concentrate as they move up the oceanic food chain, I prefer to eat small fish low on the food chain, such as herring and mackerel. I avoid fish high on the food chain
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What? NO! I don't drink water, fish fuck in there!
Re:Worst one? (Score:5, Informative)
How are you able to make that assessment if you don't even know what type of materials are being dumped?
It's heavy water.
The only radioactive element in the water under discussion is tritium.
Tritium is an element with a half-life of 12 years. This will not be a multi-generational problem. This problem will not even last that one half-life because it will dilute to undetectable levels, that is above naturally occurring tritium levels, almost immediately. Maybe keeping it in the tanks means it more of it decays while they discuss what to do with the water, but in the grand scheme of things the water is no more dangerous now than it would be if they keep talking.
This doesn't mean the water is safe to drink, or to go swimming in. It just means that if dumped in the ocean the hazard disappears.
Re: (Score:2)
It's heavy water.
The only radioactive element in the water under discussion is tritium.
Citation needed. This is not normal reactor cooling water.
Tritium is an element with a half-life of 12 years. This will not be a multi-generational problem.
So it will only be a problem for three half lives = 48 years. Local populations can take a sigh of relief.
Re:Worst one? (Score:4, Informative)
Citation needed. This is not normal reactor cooling water.
Fine. As if it's real difficult to search the internet yourself.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
Most of the radioactive isotopes have been removed using a complex filtration process. But one isotope, tritium, cannot be removed so the water has been stored in a huge tanks which will fill up by 2022.
There has long been a plan to dump the water in to the Pacific ocean and the Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada has now said that he supports the plan.
Many scientists say the water would quickly be diluted in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, and that tritium poses a low risk to human and animal health.
So it will only be a problem for three half lives = 48 years. Local populations can take a sigh of relief.
The Environmental Minister of Japan disagrees with you, as do many scientists. Why should I believe you? Have you toured the power plant recently and took inventory of the tanks?
Nobody is going to say that this poses zero risks. Everything has risks. Having the tanks on the site carries risks of someone getting hurt, maybe from falling into a tank and drowning, maybe a tank bursts and someone is struck by the rushing water or flying debris. There's risks in people getting hurt in doing whatever containment process they come up with as an alternative. This water poses a risk just sitting in those tanks. We can do a controlled release now or maybe we have another earthquake in the area and we have an uncontrolled release to deal with. The more we keep talking and not doing the risk of this only increases.
Re:Worst one? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Citation needed. This is not normal reactor cooling water.
Fine. As if it's real difficult to search the internet yourself.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
That's not a citation. The article you linked doesn't support that it is heavy water. It is not normal cooling water, it is filtered groundwater being used to cool the melted fuel rods.
Re:Worst one? (Score:5, Interesting)
How are you able to make that assessment if you don't even know what type of materials are being dumped?
It's heavy water.
It's groundwater [phys.org] that has been filtered and used to cool the fuel elements. They are pumping and filtering 800 tons of ground water a day for cooling. They are storing 400 tons of radionuclide laden groundwater per day.
The only radioactive element in the water under discussion is tritium.
According to NRC Documentation [nrc.gov] of the tank water TEPCO is proposing to dump: "containing high concentrations of Stronium-90 and tritium, is pumped to an ever-growing storage tank farm". Can you show me how they propose to remove the Strontium-90 from the water? SR-90 has a 28 year half life, so store the water for 30 years as it's second half life is much more energetic Yittrium-90 64 hours before it decays to zirconium.
The proposal by the Japanese Government is contrary to the tasks agreed and detailed by the NRC in this document, which changes the status of the section "TECHNICAL BACKGROUND: WATER SAFETY AND RADIATION" as contaminated water is normally collected.
Store it for 30 years and then talk about dumping it when it has decayed, that is easily achievable by Japan.
Re: (Score:3)
Can you show me how they propose to remove the Strontium-90 from the water? SR-90 has a 28 year half life, so store the water for 30 years as it's second half life is much more energetic Yittrium-90 64 hours before it decays to zirconium.
Tepco has on-site facilities to remove Strontium-90. From https://www7.tepco.co.jp/respo... [tepco.co.jp]
The waste water they propose dumping is the by-product of a previous filtration process IIUC.
Re: (Score:2)
So you'd increase the amount of OMG RADIONUCLIDES OMG OMG in the ocean by about 0.00000%? That completely changes the conversation.
The concern is that the OMG RADIONUCLIDES OMG bio-accumulate in the farming areas used to farm food for human consumption. There should be no problem for a technologically advanced nation like Japan storing this water for 30 years whilst the elements decay.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except tritium doesn't bioaccumulate.
Except that the whole point the article is talking about is dumping the water in the storage tanks which also contains Strontium-90 which does bio-accumulate. As for Tritium [slashdot.org]...
Tritium (Score:2)
Tritium and its most common pollutant form, tritiated water doesn't bioaccumulate. It's water. The worldwide safe levels for intake of tritium are very high compared to other radioactive pollutants since water consumed by living organisms is usually expelled by breathing, urination, transpiration etc. in a few days on average.
Most of the other members of the radioisotope zoo in ground water around Fukushima which has been captured by the engineering works to prevent pollution are processed out on-site by va
Tritium (Score:5, Informative)
Tritium and its most common pollutant form, tritiated water doesn't bioaccumulate. It's water.
A list of some scientific studies on the effects of tritium, with references, in case there is any doubt regarding Triated water's effect on living beings.
Tritium is biologically mutagenic *because* it's a low energy emitter. This characteristic makes readily absorbed by surrounding cells. The available evidence from studies conducted journal a list of effects. From those works;
Tritium can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through skin. Eating food containing 3H can be even more damaging than drinking 3H bound in water. Consequently, an estimated radiation dose based only on ingestion of tritiated water may underestimate the health effects if the person has also consumed food contaminated with tritium. (Komatsu)
Studies indicate that lower doses of tritium can cause more cell death (Dobson, 1976), mutations (Ito) and chromosome damage (Hori) per dose than higher tritium doses. Tritium can impart damage which is two or more times greater per dose than either x-rays or gamma rays.
(Straume) (Dobson, 1976) There is no evidence of a threshold for damage from 3H exposure; even the smallest amount of tritium can have negative health impacts. (Dobson, 1974) Organically bound tritium (tritium bound in animal or plant tissue) can stay in the body for 10 years or more.
It's often said "of all the elements in nuclear waste tritium is one of the more harmless ones" and while it's more benign than most other radioactive effluents it's toxicity should not be under-estimated.
Tritium can cause mutations, tumors and cell death. (Rytomaa) Tritiated water is associated with significantly decreased weight of brain and genital tract organs in mice (Torok) and can cause irreversible loss of female germ cells in both mice and monkeys even at low concentrations. (Dobson, 1979) (Laskey) Tritium from tritiated water can become incorporated into DNA, the molecular basis of heredity for living organisms. DNA is especially sensitive to radiation. (Hori) A cell's exposure to tritium bound in DNA can be even more toxic than its exposure to tritium in water. (Straume)(Carr)
First, as an isotope of hydrogen (the cell's most ubiquitous element), tritium can be incorporated into essentially all portions of the living machinery; and it is not innocuous -- deaths have occurred in industry from occupational overexposure. R. Lowry Dobson, MD, PhD. (1979)
References;
Re:Tritium (Score:4, Insightful)
Posting scary sounding shit without characterizing actual risk or probabilities is the hallmark of the FUD monger.
Re: (Score:2)
Strictly in terms of long term radioactive contamination, Fukushima was far worse than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
. The bombs were airbursts, so fallout was minimal, and blew out mostly over the ocean. Hiroshima and Nagasaki today are back to normal background radiation levels, and have been for decades.
There were a whole lot more material released (and still being released) by the Fukushima meltdowns.
Re:Worst one? (Score:4, Insightful)
First, the two nuclear bombings were not "disasters", but unpunished war crimes.
It's not a war crime if you win.
Re:Worst one? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not worried about Godzillas? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Or Hedorahs?
Not sure I'm seeing the issue... (Score:5, Informative)
So, a million tons of water (which is way more than they have, if they're talking "tens of thousands" instead of "hundreds of thousands" of tons) is about 0.001 cubic km of water.
Note, by the by, that we have 1.35 BILLION cubic km of seawater, so the hypothetical million tons is less than 0.0000000001% of the seawater.
Now, natural seawater (the 1.35 billion cubic km) has about 4000000000 tons of uranium naturally. So we'd be adding an insignificant amount of uranium (worst case is a few hundred tons added to 4 billion tons) to an effectively infinite amount of water.
Mind you, I think it's a stupid way to handle it. Put the contaminated water in shallow, open to air pools, let it evaporate. When it's done, pour concrete into the pools, dump some soil on top of the concrete, and plant flowers....
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Who said anything about zero risk? Seawater is already radioactive [waterencyclopedia.com]. Anyone so fearful of radiation that they oppose diluting this water in the ocean shouldn't be swimming in the ocean in the first place. Or visiting the beach [youtube.com]. Or flying on planes [cdc.gov]. Or sleeping next to other people [gizmodo.com]. Or exposing themselves to sunlight [cancer.org].
So you don't need to reach zero risk. You just need to
Re: Not sure I'm seeing the issue... (Score:2)
But compared the universe you and your post are really tiny....
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If we are not going to agree on the risk to health, what about the economic risk?
Telling the fish producing communities over there that it's all fine and their customers are idiots for not buying their products doesn't really help them much. The government has to be careful because they could sue to recover losses.
This is where science and reality collide.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If his house was in the ocean, it wouldn't be a problem. The whole point is to dilute it, which won't happen on land at the rate it would in the ocean.
My house is next to the ocean and the people up and down the coast I live on derive their living from fishing. Furthermore I eat a lot of the fish they catch. Now, I can understand how you find it perfectly acceptable to dump radioactive crap as long as it is dumped into somebody else's food supply, after all, it does not affect you (which would be an outrage) it affects somebody else so that makes it OK. However, and unfortunately for you, those whose food supply you propose to dump this crap into are not
Re: (Score:2)
What's wrong with your infantile brain that you think this is some sort of clever rejoinder to what you've replied to?
What's wrong with your infantile brain that you think it's OK to dump toxic, radioactive waste in nature as long it is dumped in somebody else's food supply? If people love the nuclear industry so much and think nuclear waste is so incredibly harmless they should step up and prove that to the rest of us by dumping the radioactive waste into **heir own** food supply.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Now, natural seawater has about 4000000000 tons of uranium naturally. So we'd be adding an insignificant amount of uranium
The real problem is that this radioactive water is not instantly diluted into oceans worldwide, the area around where it was thrown keeps being concentrated and marine wildlife will absorb that in significant quantities. Then who eats that?
Re: (Score:3)
Put the water in a super tanker, and then travel over the oceans, while slowly dumping it.
Re: (Score:2)
They should bring all the cancer patients who require radiation therapy for a field day at the Fukuhima beach, hundreds of thousands of them, and then release the radioactive water into the ocean. Problem solved and nobody gets hurt.
Filter/"desalinate" it? (Score:3)
It's very possible that I'm missing something here that would make this impractical but why not just filter/"desalinate" it? Either force it through some sand filters at high pressure like they do in reverse osmosis filters for water or run it through a modified evaporation process to remove just the water. I'm sure that it wouldn't be perfect, but that coupled with dilution into ocean water should render it pretty harmless. This seems to be the EPA's position (at least with low level contamination) with the only caveat seems to be that you have throw in another one or two systems (water softening and/or activated carbon) to get rid of some of the gaseous contaminates.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
Re:Filter/"desalinate" it? (Score:4)
Using osmotic filters to clean the water sounds great in theory.
In practice, it is not a workable solution:
The water is contaminated with many different isotopes. A filter to catch one, may not catch others. None will catch tritium. There are no off-the-shelf filters to catch, say, cesium, strontium, and uranium.
The water is radioactive, and the concentrated isotopes will be very radioactive. So the filtering plant would have to be run by robots. If you go on Amazon, and search for "robotically operated osmotic filtration plant", you will find that none are available. So it would have to be designed, tested, and built from scratch.
It is WAY cheaper to just store the water in a tank until the radiation fades enough to dump it ... which may be now, 8 years after the meltdown.
Re: (Score:2)
It's very possible that I'm missing something here that would make this impractical but why not just filter/"desalinate" it?
Because it is contaminated with tritium oxide, heavy water. It could be filtered out only at considerable expense and the common method of disposal for heavy water (in small quantities anyway) is to dump it down the drain.
If the disposal of small quantities of heavy water is to dump it down the drain then how do we dispose of large quantities of heavy water? Maybe just find a bigger drain.
So, yes, you are missing something. Something that should have been in the article on why they are considering they d
Re: (Score:2)
"Heavy water" in general is deuterium oxide, not tritium oxide. Heavy water isn't radioactive like tritium compounds are (it does have slightly different chemical properties to regular water and is harmful if you drink enough of it).
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but it would convince the masses.
Just add some token filters to the hoses and nobody will mind dumping it back into the ocean.
Questions ... (Score:2)
I have a question: can it be heated, so water evaporates and the overall volume be less? Or would heating make the radioactive contaminants evaporate too?
Another question: are they still using water to cool the cores? If so, why not reuse the same water, so end up with less overall contaminated water to deal with?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I have a question: can it be heated, so water evaporates and the overall volume be less? Or would heating make the radioactive contaminants evaporate too?
They won't evaporate however they will be carried with the steam and end up somewhere random in the world. Then there is the energetic cost of distilling it. It's probably a good job for some sort of solar array and perhaps the waste heat from the spent fuel rods.
Another question: are they still using water to cool the cores? If so, why not reuse the same water, so end up with less overall contaminated water to deal with?
Probably because it is ground water and they have much more of it than they can use. It's a great question though and it's likely we are going to need a lot of innovative solutions to resolve this issue.
Why on earth someone thought it was a g
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How do you seperate the radioactive elements from the water?
water filtration (Score:4, Informative)
Penroze said it, reverse osmosis filters, the same ones capable of removing salt from the water. Distillation would also work.
Well, for everything but the tritium. Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, so is really freaking hard to remove from water.
This is because chemistry treats different isotopes identically. In chemical terms, hydrogen(1 neutron), deuterium(2), and tritium(3) act identically. Same deal with U-238(depleted uranium, extra-stable) and U-235(reactor/bomb stuff), Iodine-127 vs 131, etc...
In order to separate them you have to render them a gas(using fluorine in the case of uranium) and use centrifuges. Or a particle accelerator and a magnet.
That's why back in the day making nuclear bombs using plutonium was simpler than enriching uranium. Separating plutonium from uranium is relatively easy via chemical means. Separating U-238 from U-235 is orders of magnitude more difficult.
Anyways, I agree with the other posters. H-3 isn't actually all that bad, it's a beta emitter, and the amounts not that high. If you have to, filter the other crap out, go out a couple miles onto the ocean, and release the stuff over the course of a couple hundred km so it dilutes well.
Re: (Score:2)
The canduu reactors have tritium removal systems, such as electrolysis followed by gas driers, diffusers and/or absorbers and then cryogenic distillation....
yeah, energy intensive stuff. But TEPCO should be made to buy the gear and foot the bill, serves 'em right.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyways, I agree with the other posters. H-3 isn't actually all that bad, it's a beta emitter, and the amounts not that high. If you have to, filter the other crap out, go out a couple miles onto the ocean, and release the stuff over the course of a couple hundred km so it dilutes well.
Or use an already allowed solution: separate the H and its isotopes (Deuterium, Tritium) and release it into the atmosphere on a dry day. It simply floats up to the highest atmospheric layer and eventually ends up in space.
Re: (Score:2)
Because then you have a great pile of highly radioactive used osmotic filters, too radioactive to even handle. And even then, the major contaminate - tritrium - won't be captured by reverse osmosis.
Re: (Score:2)
Umm... I hazard a guess: Money?
by land sea and air we will contaminate! (Score:2)
On the Surface... (Score:2)
It doesn't seem like a terrible idea.
"3.6 roentgen not great, not terrible"
Re: (Score:2)
If the meters show 3.6 it is 3.6.
Don't do it you fuckers (Score:2)
Nuff said.
Well, not enough, not really. Far from it to tell the truth, but it's a good start.
Re: (Score:2)
Nuff said.
Well, not enough, not really. Far from it to tell the truth, but it's a good start.
Not to be the obvious dick, but what should "we" do with it then?
Should we send it off to some remote village and market it as "free potable water" and see what happens next?
I like the ideas above, turn it into powdered milk. Maybe there is a viable recycling option out there for radioactive water.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
I propose that this radioactive water should be flushed up the assholes of Tepco executives, perhaps major shareholders as well. There should be enough pigs at the trough needing enemas to suck it all up, every last drop. Just keep those cheeks pinched, and please when you do need to take a shit, do in your own swimming pool, not the public sewage system.
Re: (Score:2)
I propose that this radioactive water should be flushed up the assholes of Tepco executives, perhaps major shareholders as well. There should be enough pigs at the trough needing enemas to suck it all up, every last drop. Just keep those cheeks pinched, and please when you do need to take a shit, do in your own swimming pool, not the public sewage system.
But for real though.
It's tritium! (Score:5, Informative)
I keep reading posts here asking the same question. A question that should have been answered in the article. "Why don't they just filter out the radioactive stuff and dump the non-radioactive water into the ocean?"
The answer is because it's the water itself that is radioactive. The radioactive material in the water is the hydrogen atoms in the molecules. A radioactive hydrogen isotope that is so common that it has a unique name, tritium.
This radioactive hydrogen isotope has two neutrons, so it's heavier than normal water. We have processes to separate it but it is very energy intensive and carries out deuterium, another hydrogen isotope with one neutron that is not radioactive, with the tritium. Deuterium and tritium are naturally occurring though in very small quantities. When concentrated into heavy water it becomes hazardous to the health of plants and animals but diluted properly it causes no harm.
How does one dilute heavy water to the point it can harm no one? I don't know, maybe dump it in the biggest body of water on the planet?
The lack of leaving out this critical detail leaves people to wonder why other avenues have not been considered. The problem is tritium, that's it. This can be filtered out of the water only at considerable expense because it is water that they'd be filtering out. Even then the disposal of heavy water is often just to dump it down the drain.
Just dump it already!
Re: (Score:3)
How does one dilute heavy water to the point it can harm no one? I don't know
You store it for its relatively short half life and release it when it has decayed. It's a great incentive for Japan to come up with an industrial solution to reducing the groundwater flowing into the site.
Just dump it already!
It also contains Strontium 90 so that's not a good idea. It's the 21st century, storing some water for a few years whilst the radio-isotopes within it decay is not a difficult process. Engineer the container to fail after the end of the projected half life and automatically empty itself. You're sa
Re: (Score:2)
Why do they need so much water for cooling? Couldn't they just reuse it? That is, pump it in, let it absorb heat, pump it out into some tank where the heat is released "naturally" and then start over?
They do, Essentially they pump 800 tons of contaminated groundwater per day over the melted reactor core to keep it cool. As they do this groundwater comes in contact with the melted fuel assemblies and collect radionuclides, so they continue to filter it and concentrate those elements into 400 tons that they remove and store. See my other post for more details [slashdot.org].
The premise of the The Host sci-fi film (Score:2)
I guess the premise of the Korean The Host sci-fi horror film wasn't so far fetched after all.
Re:nuclear apologists take note (Score:5, Insightful)
And nuclear alarmists always ignore that we only need to contain it for 250-500 years. How long do you suppose we need to store CO2 before it becomes something harmless to the environment?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We've already managed well more than 10 years.
Solar and wind are excellent options for many purposes. When comparing our options it will do us no good to base our decisions on FUD when we have actual good estimates we can use.
It's worth pointing out that even if wind and solar prove to be the most efficient and entirely adequate, we will STILL need reactors to produce radioisotopes for medical and other applications.
Re:nuclear apologists take note (Score:5, Interesting)
PV waste is a big problem that is being kicked down the road. No solutions exist and no funding is being set aside. Yet people want to produce hundreds of square miles of panels that will likely sit in huge landfills leaching into the soils.
1 new 1200MW nuclear plant can eliminate the need to produce about 15,000 acres (24 square miles) of PV cell material. And the cost to recycle that might be $1B or more, even after recovery of the materials. Meanwhile, windmill blades may pile up by the thousands, with no other use in sight. Again, nobody planning for or funding ahead of time as nuclear is doing.
Re: (Score:2)
No, nuclear waste have never been ignored. Nuclear plants fund waste from the moment they start generating.
That's American policy, can you link to the Japanese Diet's version of the policy if you have evidence of it, however I didn't find it.
There are safe storage solutions that are wrapped up in politics and the successful FUD mongering of the oil industry. They thank you again for your support.
You really need to get your head around the 2005 US Energy Policy Act to make that argument. Refering to construction SEC. 638 of that Act provides $500M per proposed reactor in support for where construction is delayed for NRC approved designs. There are also input tax credits that can be claimed by utilities proposing the reactors. Generally these utilities are coal and
Re: (Score:3)
people want to produce hundreds of square miles of panels that will likely sit in huge landfills leaching into the soils.
Why do people keep saying this when we have wafer recovery processes to reuse the highly-valuable silicon wafers or recycle them (they're already more-pure than freshly-mined silicon, and it's expensive as all hell to purify to PV grade), while the rest of the panel is recyclable plastic and aluminum?
Re:nuclear apologists take note (Score:5, Informative)
How can we possibly store waste for tens of thousands of years?
Within about 500 years, nuclear waste emits about as much aggregate radiation as the ore from which it was mined.
At that point it is still dangerous, but no more so than uranium and thorium occurring in natural geological structures.
Waste storage is mostly a phony issue. Vitrify it and bury it deep in the desert. Problem solved.
If you are opposed to nuclear energy, economic arguments make way more sense than safely arguments. Nukes are way too expensive, and aren't getting cheaper.
Re:nuclear apologists take note (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Bury it? We have man made structures are are approaching 5000 years old. 10,000 or even 100,000 year is a blink of an eye in geological time. Nuclear waste disposal really isn’t that hard.
The issues with nuclear power is and always will be operating reactors safely.
Re: (Score:3)
Waste is not a real issue. First it is called used fuel. Second it has never harmed a single person in world history. Third after it cools off you would literally have to eat it to hurt you. All of the highly radioactive elements completely decay while it is cooling off in a pool for 10 years. The longer lived elements are not that dangerous because they are not radioactive enough(long half-life means less radioactive). It is a solid piece of heavy metal. If you eat a heavy metal rod, that's on you.
Re: (Score:2)
[From Japan, where I've been watching this SAD circus from Day 1.]
No, TEPCO is not a for-profit company now. The liability from the incompetence of Fukushima destroyed the company and any possibility of future profit. The Japanese government essentially socialized the loss and "nationalized" the company. They kept the name to minimize the PR damage, and that keep-the-name decision was mostly because of the government's own failure to regulate TEPCO well enough to avoid the disaster in the first place.
Someon
Public masturbation of 946416 (Score:2)
Z^-1
Re: (Score:2)
No, because the contaminate is water - water with one of the hydrogen atoms as a tritium atom - which will pass through any membrane that water will.