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from the do-you-want-Godzilla?-because-this-is-how-you-get-Godzilla dept.
Japan reportedly decides to release treated Fukushima water into the sea:
Japan will release more than a million tons of treated radioactive water from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea in a decades-long operation, reports said Friday, despite strong opposition from environmentalists, local fishermen and farmers. The release of the water, which has been filtered to reduce radioactivity, is likely to start in 2022 at the earliest, said national dailies the Nikkei, the Yomiuri, and other local media.
The decision ends years of debate over how to dispose of the liquid that includes water used to cool the power station after it was hit by a massive tsunami in 2011.
[...] There are around 1.23 million tons of waste water stored in tanks at the facility, according to plant operator TEPCO, which also declined to comment on the reports.
[...] Environmental activists have expressed strong opposition to the proposals, and fishermen and farmers have voiced fear that consumers will shun seafood and produce from the region.
[...] A decision has been getting increasingly urgent as space to store the water -- which also includes groundwater and rain that seeps daily into the plant -- is running out.
Most of the radioactive isotopes have been removed by an extensive filtration process -- but one remains, tritium. It can't be removed with existing technology.
[...] Tritium is only harmful to humans in very large doses, experts say. The International Atomic Energy Agency argues that properly filtered water could be diluted with seawater and then safely released into the ocean.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday October 19 2020, @08:32AM (29 children)
Frustrating article. Problem is tritium can't be cleaned out of the Fukushima water. Tritium is, as we all know, found naturally in water. Is there a significant increase over background levels of Tritium? Article doesn't say, probably journalists don't even know what Tritium is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @08:46AM (11 children)
I thought it could be separated by centrifuge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @09:03AM (3 children)
Sure, if you have 10 liters. Or 100. They have a few billion which makes centrifuges not exactly viable method anymore.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 19 2020, @10:28AM (1 child)
It's supposed to be a decade long operation tho so it's not like they are pouring it all out in a day or so, there might be time to filter it some more or technology might somehow catch up with at least some of it. But still as mentioned, it probably won't have a significant effect. I'm fairly certain, without even knowing, that they'll also monitor the situation and do some testing -- certainly so if they start to pull mutated three-eyed-fish out of the sea or if Gojiro makes an appearance.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Muad'Dave on Monday October 19 2020, @11:54AM
If it's a decade-long operation, the water they release in year 10 will have almost half of the tritium it contained gone by decay anyway. The half-life of tritium is about 12.3 years.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @12:57PM
Why don't they make some neutron bombs? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb [wikipedia.org]
For protection from China, you know.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by bradley13 on Monday October 19 2020, @09:14AM (6 children)
Yes, and it's quite valuable. Which makes me think that the concentration is pretty low in the Fukushima water.
But indeed, TFA doesn't say, nor do any of the other articles I found. Stupid journalism, probably being pushed by greenies who also don't know what tritium is, but think that anything related to Fukushima must be bad.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday October 19 2020, @12:58PM (5 children)
Just imagine it were Russians releasing the water.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 19 2020, @01:23PM (4 children)
They would just bottle the water and sell it as a health-tonic -- to give you THE power!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @04:35PM (1 child)
Fukushima Water (tm).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @04:37PM
Gives your skin a healty glow.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 19 2020, @05:23PM
Nuka Quantum [fandom.com]. Obviously.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday October 20 2020, @01:03AM
Well, they do have Novichok Cooking Oil https://www.foodbeast.com/news/novichok-cooking-oil/ [foodbeast.com]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @09:01AM (10 children)
Here is the real concentration in the Tepco tanks
https://www.tepco.co.jp/en/decommission/progress/watertreatment/images/190331tankarea_en.pdf [tepco.co.jp]
Biological half-life is only about 2 weeks and radiological is 12 years. Releasing that into the ocean is basically a noop when it comes to radiation levels. At heavy water reactors, they mostly capture the tritium for sale later, but some leaks out anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Regulatory_limits [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Tritium_production [wikipedia.org]
https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/pubs_catalogue/uploads/CNSC_Release_and_Dose_eng_rev2.pdf [nuclearsafety.gc.ca]
There would be no significant increase in the background radiation from this release because it's very small compared to what is already there. The important thing here is they've cleaned the heavy elements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @09:28AM (5 children)
sorry for my ignorance, but what does "noop" mean in this sentence?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday October 19 2020, @09:35AM (4 children)
noop = no-op = no-operation. An instruction on a CPU that literally "does nothing", has no effect.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @10:25AM (1 child)
thank you. it sounded like something I'd heard before, and I even thought about "no-operation", but I thought that meant "this is an operation you should not do". whole thing was confusing, hence the question.
anyway. I guess "noop = Left Shift+Right Shift" then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @12:14PM
Left Shift+Right Shift was sometimes used to switch to Russian input here back in the DOS days…
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @10:32AM (1 child)
What kind of four letter instructions do you write? It's NOP not NOOP.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday October 19 2020, @04:39PM
Narp.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday October 19 2020, @01:09PM (3 children)
If they really cleaned the heavy elements, why don't they keep the water for a few more decades?
No, I don't trust them. They are people who run away and hired bums to fight the explosion while managing it remotely from Tokyo. They are trying to dump the heavy dirty shit in the ocean - hide the evidence.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @01:48PM (2 children)
They went through this at Three Mile Island. They had to build large storage tanks to hold treated water, which was much better quality than the Susquehanna River in which they wanted to return it, but they had to hold the water essentially for PR reasons, not health reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @08:11PM (1 child)
Q: So you want to release radioactive water in to the ocean?
A: Yes, but we aren't releasing the vast majority and the water we will release isn't that much worse than background levels.
Q: So you admit it is worse than background levels.
A: Everything is radioactive and the water won't be detectable, if at all, once diluted.
Q: DID YOU HEAR THAT!? THEY WANT TO RELEASE UNDETECTABLE RADIOACTIVE WATER. Won't someone think of the children?
[repeat while a single atom is still the wrong isotope]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @08:28PM
Homeopathic radioactive.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 19 2020, @02:55PM (5 children)
Isn't tritium rather valuable for things like, oh, fusion reactors which are reputed to be coming online in 5-10 years?
Wouldn't it make sense to recover the tritium before releasing the contaminated water? Unless, you're working an anti-fusion agenda.
Either way, I do agree, it is better to release the water in a controlled manner instead of keeping it in crumbling tanks and have it all spill out in the next earthquake / volcano / tsunami / Godzilla attack.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 19 2020, @04:20PM (4 children)
It says right in the summary there isn't a known way to remove it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 19 2020, @05:44PM (3 children)
Seems... unlikely. How do they normally collect tritium? If they need the hydrogen to be in gaseous form before they separate the tritium, any science fair candidate can split the water with electrolysis... and they could even re-combust the hydrogen and oxygen after it is split and the tritium has been separated from the regular H2 using the heat of combustion to partially power the separation process.
Now, is it economically viable? That all depends on your definition of viable, and what your values are for things like perceived radioactive contamination of the fisheries...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday October 20 2020, @01:08AM (2 children)
My bet it is economically viable as I believe the costs are directly proportional to the concentration of tritium. What probably makes it not so desirable are impurities such as other radioactive elements still presented.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 20 2020, @11:36AM (1 child)
So, again, in gaseous form it should be relatively easy to fractionally separate tritium gas from any contaminants...
I'm sure they have their reasons, the deciding factors often come down more to politics than science.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday October 20 2020, @03:00PM
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Funny) by oumuamua on Monday October 19 2020, @01:39PM (2 children)
Over-fishing problem: solved
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 19 2020, @02:52PM (1 child)
Yep, seems like the perfect opportunity for a "nature preserve" that will improve neighboring fisheries through hyper-abundance (aka non-exploited abundance) in the exclusion zone spilling out into the harvested fisheries.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @08:22PM
I'm sure Blinky will love his new habitat free from the dangers of fishing.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/b/b0/250px-Blinky.png/revision/latest?cb=20140817114639 [nocookie.net]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @02:48PM (5 children)
when the "Air pump" was installed to force extra air into the exhaust manifolds.
The solution to pollution is dilution.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Monday October 19 2020, @03:50PM (1 child)
I think that was mainly to inject oxygen pre-catalyst, so the CO and unburnt hydrocarbons could be oxidized. The carb engines had to run slightly on the rich side and there was no oxygen for the cat to work. They couldn't run lean for temperature margins (and I don't know whether the early cats could reduce the nitrous oxides).
As for the water dump, if the water really is clean from fission products, there are larger catastrophes. As mentioned, tritium has a reasonably short half-life. But they'll have a seriously hard time dealing with the reactor wreckage soon enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @04:06PM
Yes, air pumps were pre-catalyst converters. And yes, they were for dumping in extra oxygen to burn (hopefully) any unburned hydrocarbons.
But they also had the effect of diluting the other pollution byproducts of the engine due to the extra air being injected into the exhaust stream. Which is where the meme came about.
First gen. catalysts did nothing for NOX. They attacked unburned hydrocarbons and CO only. For NOX treatment one needed the two stage catalysts, and this was why eventually all cars moved to two stage catalysts (to also clean up NOX).
So at the very least, the air pumps made the engine appear to produce less NOX, because it appeared to go from outputting 10ppm to 5ppm (made up numbers) due to injecting an equal amount of air as exhaust gas (another made up number, I do not remember what injection volume the air pumps operated at).
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Monday October 19 2020, @08:22PM (2 children)
Lots of modern cars have them too. Except now the pump is electric and runs only when the engine is cold.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @08:50PM (1 child)
Really? Can you point to details on one? I'm curious to see what it is they have added on the newer ones.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Wednesday October 21 2020, @06:55PM
This Benz is a bit older but both my 98 and 07 models had them. https://www.pelicanparts.com/techarticles/Mercedes-W204/13-ENGINE-Secondary_Air_Pump_Replacement/13-ENGINE-Secondary_Air_Pump_Replacement.htm [pelicanparts.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @05:01PM
I thought would be interesting
https://slashdot.org/story/20/10/17/000238/japan-decides-to-release-treated-fukushima-water-into-the-sea [slashdot.org]
Most of what was discussed there is also discussed here, so I imagine many people here already read the article and comments from there, but there was one quote that wasn't really discussed.
Tritium (Score:5, Informative)
by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Saturday October 17, 2020 @03:51AM (#60617808) Journal
Apparently, the contamination is from tritium (Hydrogen-3) which they cannot remove easily because it is chemically just hydrogen which you get a lot of in water. It has a half-life of 12 years and they claim the process will take 30 years to dump so by the end only about a 7th of it will remain.
The problem with tritium is that while outside our bodies it is relatively harmless (the beta particles it produces are very low energy and cannot penetrate skin) it can replace hydrogen in our bodies because it is a hydrogen isotope and there it can do a lot more damage. The good news is that since it is just hydrogen it should not end up naturally concentrating anywhere e.g. like some fish can concentrate heavy metals from sea water etc. because hydrogen is everywhere.
Provided Japan has made sure the rate of release is slow enough and diluted enough it should be pretty safe and the biggest danger will be where the tritium is most concentrated i.e. on the Japanese coast.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2020, @07:40PM
it sucks. the ocean, however, is ginormous ... so good luck winning the lottery.
on the other hand, humans being a curious bunch, how about proofing your real curiosity and being a tritium release decission maker, doing a simulated but real tritium delution w/ ocean water in a aquarium tank and growing some stuff in it for a year or so ... and then ... you know eat it?
ofc if grows to look funny you don't have to taste it ... being obvious?
i want to believe in science. i just cannot do those experiments in by backyard on a shoestring$ to confirm/reproduce thus it invovles a element of trust. now add in all the implications when in the realm of nuclear science (example near daily news of one country north of south korea doing research in their backyard and the outrage it causes) there is a relistic non-paranoid reason to DOUBT publically (non desirables and terrorist are a subset of public) accesible and released "scientific" information in the nuclear realm.
this could be good but it does or could clash with the generally excepted mandate to publish all scientfic data unbiased no matter the implications.
for example this one alien planet was very rigorous with this principle and the planet blew up because everybody had access to "grow a red button in the garden, that when pushed generated a mini blackhole" knowledge and so the planet disappeard but won the universal nobel price for scientfic openness ...
but maybe i am too dumb and just like to worry ...
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday October 20 2020, @01:18AM (5 children)
It does not matter how low the radiation level is even compared to the natural background. The danger of radiation is pure probability of an energetic particle hitting the right or wrong - depending on your view - spot in the body. So, a given amount of radiation released should be translatable into a number of extra deaths.
When we compare say nuclear energy with coal, what we really compare is how many people will be dead because of one or the other tech. Sure, the resulting energy could save some lives so the total may or may not be positive.
Therefore in this case we should compare how many people will be dead if the water is released as opposed to stored and exactly where.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Tuesday October 20 2020, @08:37AM (1 child)
In the ocean the tritium will disperse in a medium that humans don't directly drink. If you keep it on land and the tanks decay and spill, you have tritium laced water spilling out on areas where people get their fresh water from. Given that TEPCO isn't the most reliable partner with their operating equipment track record, dumping this water in the ocean in a controlled manner might be safer then keeping it on land.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday October 20 2020, @02:57PM
Yes, I could buy this; especially if it were spelled like this by the source.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by captain_nifty on Tuesday October 20 2020, @03:09PM (2 children)
There is some evidence that exposure to low levels of radiation is actually beneficial to health, so a low level release like this might end in less people dying.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday October 21 2020, @02:05AM (1 child)
That's a popular theory from 50s which was debunked, I think; at least by current science.
I vividly remember a science fiction story from 60s - but can't find it out - about a guy who had an incurable cancer and was told about a lawn up in the mountains with red berries that cure it. He hiked half dead for a month to the place and it were just strawberries. Nevertheless, he stayed over there and ate them all and was cured. It turned out they were on top of a radium deposit.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2020, @07:04PM
It is very much not debunked. It all goes to the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) level for radiation safety. Some have argued that reality is far from linear at low doses and there were some studies that showed not only are cancers not higher in high elevation locations like Denver (whose citizens receive more background radiation from cosmic rays), or airline workers (likewise on the doses), some showed a lower than expected number of cancers.
LNT is the basis for all nuclear safety regulations, which argues that the danger is never zero, that you get half the risk at half the dose, etc. Following that reasoning you can get to silly things like, ingesting 10 liters of water over an hour will kill you, which means ingesting 5 liters per hour over 2 hours will kill you, . . . , which means ingesting 78 ml per hour over 8 hours will kill you, . . .