Comments
doctoreldritch t1_ja6kt0o wrote
In both relevant senses of "powerful," yes, this is a non-story. Not only is the amount of remaining radiation fairly small to begin with, being diluted like crazy, and being immediately and harmlessly absorbed by the water it's in, but on top of that tritium decay is also far lower energy (and therefore both less penetrating and less damaging) than most other nuclear decay, to the point where it can't even penetrate human skin in the first place.
Cr33py07dGuy t1_ja740um wrote
Sure. Science. But on the flip-side, have you ever seen Godzilla?
Chroma-Co t1_ja775rr wrote
Godzilla is fine, but have you seen Gamera? He is friend to children!
gottabemaybe t1_ja7a5n2 wrote
Mbaker1201 t1_ja7rpv5 wrote
What about Mothra?
Main-Past1594 t1_ja8s1fe wrote
You ever seen mecha Godzilla?
Coolegespam t1_ja78drm wrote
>tritium decay is also far lower energy (and therefore both less penetrating and less damaging) than most other nuclear decay,
Tritium is heavy hydrogen and takes the place chemically of hydrogen. Once it's in your body it will fill the same role as hydrogen does which means it's getting into your cells, your proteins, even your DNA where it will do a lot of damage when it decays.
It's not harmless. Not in the slightest.
wanwan159 t1_ja7d2tp wrote
half life of tritium is 12.33 years.
A human can survive about 3 days without water, which already says a lot with how fast it will exit the body.
[deleted] t1_ja7xbnm wrote
And it has been about that long already so, it shouldn't be an issue now
anti-DHMO-activist t1_ja7enx2 wrote
Tritium occurs naturally, just saying. There's always a tiny amount in your drinking water. It's such a weak beta-emitter, that there's almost no danger from it.
What's being released here, over 7 years, is a total of 2.2g. While the total emission into the seas is about 30-40 grams/year, without any issues so far.
Because of the short half life, there's also no reason to expect long-term accumulation.
Coolegespam t1_ja8ws3q wrote
>Tritium occurs naturally, just saying.
At 10^-18 per H. That's effectively non-existent, and this is more concentrated.
>There's always a tiny amount in your drinking water. It's such a weak beta-emitter, that there's almost no danger from it.
There's no danger from it because there's effectively none there naturally. Being a 'weak' beta emitter is meaningless once it's already in your body.
>Because of the short half life, there's also no reason to expect long-term accumulation.
Holy shit, that's not how it works. Super heavy water in your body can under go chemical changes. Swapping bonds with other atoms, and taking the place of hydrogen in various metabolic reactions that take place. Some of them will form bonds and become sugars, proteins and amino acids.
When that tritium decays, you be left with an ionizing electron inside your body, an He3+ and a damaged base pair, amino acid, protein, etc.
It is NOT safe, and it's terrifying that you think it is.
anti-DHMO-activist t1_ja90ayr wrote
You are deliberately trying to make it sound dangerous while conveniently ignoring actual radiation doses.
And, again, it's 2.2g of tritium. In france alone about 30g are released every year and there is no evidence of any damage at all.
>The latest committed effective dose coefficient of tritium incorporated into the body via the oral route in adults is 1.9 × 10^−8 mSv/Bq for the soluble form, and that of the biogenic form is 5.1 × 10^−8 mSv/Bq. Source
>wastewater will be diluted from hundreds of thousands of Bq per liter of tritium in the storage tanks to 1,500 Bq per liter in discharge water. [...] The maximum estimated dose from Fukushima's discharged water will be 3.9 microsieverts per year. This is much lower than the 2,400 microsieverts people receive from natural radiation on average each year. source
>As of April 2021, total amount of tritium stored in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is about 860 terabecquerels (TBq). In comparison to the discharge of tritium from nuclear facilities across the world, see the table below. In 2018, La Hague reprocessing plant in France discharged 11,460 TBq of tritium, which is more than 13 times the total amount of tritium stored in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.[57] From 2010 to 2020, nuclear power plants in South Korea discharged a total of 4,362 TBq of tritium, which is more than 5 times the total amount of tritium stored in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Source
Coolegespam t1_ja92ezt wrote
You paper literally says exactly what I said above for how Tritium interacts with your body's metabolism, and the risk factors of that.
Thank you for proving my point.
anti-DHMO-activist t1_ja9rkgv wrote
Dosis sola facit venenum.
Do you have any education about radiation hazards and how to interpret them? You're acting like an expert yet failing to respond to the points at all.
You're arguing dishonestly and cherrypicking a tiny part instead of responding to the actual point - the total radiation dose. Do you know that you have quite a lot of radioactive potassium in your body? Tiny amounts are completely negligible and their effect is included in the radiation dose calculations. That's why I posted them. The target release level is below the food safety maximums set by the WHO, even if you drank the released water without further dilution.
Even in the worst case the effect is miniscule. Ffs, learn a thing about radiation and the units used to determine exposition.
>The latest committed effective dose coefficient of tritium incorporated into the body via the oral route in adults is 1.9 × 10−8 mSv/Bq for the soluble form, and that of the biogenic form is 5.1 × 10−8 mSv/Bq
this is already that worst case. And it's as minor as it gets. Do you think everybody knowing anything about radiation at all is an utter moron?
I'm sick of people who don't know anything trying to act educated but failing to grasp the most basic things.
And, again - this discharge is already being done and confirmed harmless.
Respond to my individual points please and stop the cherrypicking. It's obvious and dishonest.
Coolegespam t1_jabyi34 wrote
>Dosis sola facit venenum.
In radiation all dosage is cumulative and no, research has not shown otherwise yet.
>Do you have any education about radiation hazards and how to interpret them? You're acting like an expert yet failing to respond to the points at all.
I have a minor in Nuclear engineering and a minor in physics. So, kind of? I also have a BS in computational mathematics and poly sci, but they're less relevant.
>You're arguing dishonestly and cherrypicking a tiny part instead of responding to the actual point
Lol, you literally said this: >>Tritium occurs naturally, just saying. There's always a tiny amount in your drinking water. It's such a weak beta-emitter, that there's almost no danger from it.
and this
>> ...tritium decay is also far lower energy (and therefore both less penetrating and less damaging) than most other nuclear decay, to the point where it can't even penetrate human skin in the first place.
Really, this is the only point I've been attacking. Tritium is not a safe material, you keep saying it's harmless, and it's not. You don't know how it effects biological systems or the risk of it once ingested or inhaled. Your own paper says, exactly, what I said. Yet, somehow I'm dishonest.
>I'm sick of people who don't know anything trying to act educated but failing to grasp the most basic things.
Same.
>Respond to my individual points please and stop the cherrypicking. It's obvious and dishonest.
I did, you responded by posting a source that agreed with me, and point blank, said your understanding of the bio availability and effects of Tritium were wrong. Again, that is the only point I've been making this whole time.
doctoreldritch t1_jad3vf3 wrote
Dang you guys are really still going at this huh? Just so we're all on the same page, you are aware that we eat bananas, right?
As before, even just compared to normal potassium ingestion alone (nevermind commercial air flight or medical x-rays), this is nothing, both in volume and in energy level. Our bodies' normal repair mechanisms can shrug off this small amount of low-energy radiation without breaking stride. This is like ducks panicking about a light rain; you literally live constantly immersed in the stuff, this is not making any kind of difference whatsoever.
MonsterHunterOwl t1_ja6jp8r wrote
Yup, probably less than a banana or that’s emitted from the human body, volume matters
AngryRedGummyBear t1_ja6po68 wrote
I find it funny that "banana for scale" works with radiation exposure.
[deleted] t1_ja7289t wrote
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Iceblade02 t1_ja8g23e wrote
Yeah, it's actually a wonderful tool to describe to less well versed individuals just how (non-) harmful nuclear power is.
MonsterHunterOwl t1_jaarir8 wrote
People without physics knowledge also are often surprised that almost everything is radioactive, and I’m some cases standing next to another human, is technically more dangerous radioactively.
Vinomadd4877 t1_ja6l8gr wrote
True. This disaster is ONLY a disaster because of how localized the material is. It will have essentially 0 effect on the ocean at large.
...except for the matter of diffusion... If this is released in one place, yes, that place locally could be poisoned. Whether this is a good idea or not depends ENTIRELY on how the waste is dispensed.
anti-DHMO-activist t1_ja742es wrote
It's tritium, which is practically rather harmless. And only ~2.2g of it. Even locally that's not going to have any serious impact.
La hague in france releases about 13 times that much, every year.
This is a complete non-issue.
Deep-Attempt6967 t1_ja6m64t wrote
Why? This well studied and perfectly safe.
GarySmith2021 t1_ja6xnxr wrote
So is nuclear power in general, but countries like Germany still find it easier to get the public to support coal (ironically, more radioactive pollution) than Nuclear because of large scale smear campaigns.
TranscendentalViolet t1_ja7mk3e wrote
Not saying you’re wrong, but there’s good reason to doubt businesses when they say the solution to pollution is dilution. It was a pretty common saying in some industries and for decades, and it resulted in hundreds to thousands of areas in the US which are so polluted it will be hundreds of years before the damage is rectified, if that.
I’ll admit I can’t say with certainty the best course of action here, as I haven’t read the research or looked at the sources. It probably isn’t that much of an issue, and maybe Japan has better and more enforced regulation than the US. But for my experience, once you give the ok for these businesses with practically zero environmental accountability to pollute, and expect them to do it responsibly, is often the beginning of destroying the local ecosystem. Then the taxpayers pay for it, because there’s almost always a way for the skeevy executives to avoid responsibility.
sb_747 t1_ja7wqx1 wrote
> Not saying you’re wrong, but there’s good reason to doubt businesses when they say the solution to pollution is dilution.
But it isn’t just a business.
It’s every nuclear authority on the planet saying it’s safe.
TranscendentalViolet t1_ja8gmpc wrote
Well, the nuclear regulation authority in the article is a department in Japan’s government, presumably at least somewhat beholden to politicians and therefore TEPCo and other businesses as well. Do you have info on a non biased organization which corroborates their conclusion?
Again, it may be completely safe, and probably is. But the reason the”solution to pollution is dilution” was used as justification for waste disposal while creating horrible environmental disasters is because each individual polluting act is just as they say - essentially harmless to the environment. It’s the consistent release of pollutants over a long period of time which destroys the environment, and it’s been 12 years since the tsunami, and this is hardly the first irradiated water they’ve released.
autotldr t1_ja6hg8r wrote
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot)
> SPRING OR SUMMER RELEASE. A TEPCO employee on the shore pointed out toward the water and said: "Can you see them?".
> The government and TEPCO reached an agreement with the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations in 2015 that "The treated water will not be released without the understanding of people involved."
> TEPCO initially planned to complete its countermeasures against water leaks at reactor buildings and finish operations of the ice wall around March 2021.
Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: water^#1 TEPCO^#2 plant^#3 reactor^#4 tons^#5
[deleted] t1_ja6gz29 wrote
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MonsterHunterOwl t1_ja6jq79 wrote
It sure is, tho not alone, it’s pretty good tho.
SuspiciousStable9649 t1_ja6jlmg wrote
I know your sarcastic, but I think nuclear will have a place as messy as it is. We will trade radiation for CO2 and methane and be glad for it (unfortunately).
DIBE25 t1_ja6qxtw wrote
tldr and you can even not read the rest: safety before returns on investment is better than no return on investment because lack of safety
and to have more stable and safer nukes those paying for it just need to accept the fact that having a plant meeting or exceeding safety requirements is better than a plant being on maintenance half the time
also the radiation of a nuclear plant is lower than that of a coal plant due to the uranium in the coal's ashes - iirc
so if the reactor vessel isn't completely crap along with the other meters of concrete and whatnot there shouldn't be any concerns with radiation
I won't touch proper waste disposal since that's fairly.. you dig a hole far away in a special kind of rock and fill holes in the hole with the sticks and the sticks are in dry ceramic and multiple metal layers and all that is covered in concrete
man I'm tired sorry if this makes no sense
CletusDSpuckler t1_ja6nfb9 wrote
We had high hopes for an unlimited supply of quality sarcasm, but as you can see, it hasn't panned out.
wart365 t1_ja6p6hd wrote
It is, and this includes replacing last-gen plants with newer ones.
False_Profit_ t1_ja7f9lu wrote
Yeah, when you don't build them on the ocean and fill it with government yes men.
VanArchie t1_ja6jkef wrote
I'm pretty sure defused throughout the ocean and with proper treatment it will be as powerful as ambient background radiation.