[HN Gopher] Japan decides to release water from Fukushima plant ...
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Japan decides to release water from Fukushima plant into sea
Author : thread_id
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-04-11 21:02 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asia.nikkei.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asia.nikkei.com)
| staticelf wrote:
| Japan is a cool country, except stuff like this and their
| obsession in killing whales, sharks and dolphins.
| TedShiller wrote:
| So in other words they just waited until the accident is no
| longer in the headlines?
| wffurr wrote:
| ...isn't this a headline?
| kminehart wrote:
| Read the article before jumping to conclusions.
| 9500 wrote:
| 10 years too late if you ask me...
| dathinab wrote:
| There are some radioactive elements in the water which decay
| relatively fast, so waiting a bit before releasing it is a good
| idea (and on radioactive scale 10years are just a bit).
| samatman wrote:
| Good.
|
| A decade of listening to hippies say the most insane things about
| radiation from Fukushima, driven by cynical and breathless media
| mendacity, was a real black pill.
|
| I've said this before: Fukushima was the worst environmental
| disaster in human history, because our media landscape amplified
| it into something which effectively cut off nuclearization of
| baseline power as something which Western nations which aren't
| France could do. I don't know precisely how many gigatonnes of
| carbon we're talking about but it is, without exaggeration, a
| double-digit percentage of the total. It could be gone and it
| isn't, and it's because of Fukushima.
|
| The amount of radiation in that water is utterly dwarfed by
| natural potassium. You can use your search engine of choice to
| find the graphic, you will laugh. Negligible.
|
| What isn't negligible is the terror which benefitted _only_ a few
| people in journalism who sold some ads with it. The human cost is
| immeasurable. Such a shame.
| 0xTJ wrote:
| I really find it gross the extent to which fear mongering over
| nuclear happens. Countries decommissioning nuclear plants to
| switch to coal, which kill far more people, even scaling by
| use.
|
| Instead of using a source of power that's overall incredibly
| safe, and which produces relatively small amounts of highly
| manageable waste, people have pushed to switch to these
| incredibly environmentally harmful power sources. This is
| especially surprising from countries like Germany that, as
| someone who doesn't live anywhere near them, see them as
| technically adept.
|
| My province in Canada got 60% of our power in 2018 from nuclear
| (plus 1/4 from hydro), and a different province got 95% of
| theirs from hydro, but then that's offset by other provinces
| that get 90% of theirs from natural gas and coal. Sure not
| every place is ideally suited for a lot of nuclear (though
| hopefully SMRs will help), but 90% is too high.
|
| We need less fossil fuels and more nuclear to bridge the gap to
| more renewables.
|
| For an interesting comparison of the deaths from nuclear
| energy, compared to other sources, I highly recommend "How Many
| People Did Nuclear Energy Kill? Nuclear Death Toll" [1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM
| zabzonk wrote:
| > Countries decommissioning nuclear plants to switch to coal,
|
| That won't happen in the UK for political reasons - the
| miner's strike and Thatcherism (and vast amounts of
| suffering) would be seen to be for nothing. The UK has put a
| lot of effort into renewables, and is currently building a
| new nuclear station.
| dathinab wrote:
| > The amount of radiation in that water is utterly dwarfed by
| natural potassium. You can use your search engine of choice to
| find the graphic, you will laugh. Negligible.
|
| Only if you instantly perfectly mix all radioactive material
| with all the water in the ocean, which won't happen.
|
| Dumping (liquid) radioactive wast into the sea is common
| practice and often allowed due to dilution, but there are _very
| strong_ indices that people living close to the dump site (and
| potentially not that close) will have noticeable increased
| health risk. Because clearly (common sense) it takes time for a
| liquid to be diluted and until then it is in a unhealthy
| concentration.
|
| Anyway this is a one-time dump so it's a bit different from
| continuously dumping smaller amounts over decades. (Which now
| that I think about it Fukushima might be doing since it's
| creation anyway...).
| ddingus wrote:
| Yeah, the core itself is likely to become part of the water
| cycle.
|
| What is the half life? Someone said it was half as
| radioactive after a decade. Maybe it can really be a one time
| dump.
| shoto_io wrote:
| Second answer includes:
|
| _> If I'm completely honest, I'd be perfectly willing to
| drink a glass of the water they're planning to dump. I'm
| not heading all the way to Japan for it, and I doubt they'd
| let me do it anyway, but I'd drink it. Make of that what
| you will._
| coldtea wrote:
| Conventiently, he wont. Those living nearby will,
| however.
| shoto_io wrote:
| These answers sound almost like they're fabricated...
| pjscott wrote:
| Close; the half-life of tritium is 12.3 years, at which
| point it turns into stable helium-3.
| smarx007 wrote:
| Notably, the article submitted to HN did not have a single
| number inside (well, it did, but "2011" is a year and not
| relevant here). Thanks for the pointer, found the infographic
| here: https://www.quora.com/Japanese-Prime-Minister-Yoshihide-
| Suga...
| zabzonk wrote:
| > which effectively cut off nuclearization of baseline power as
| something which Western nations which aren't France could do
|
| The UK is currently building a new reactor and considering
| building four others.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I am not myself against nuclear power as a technology but maybe
| just maybe it was a _bad_ idea to build a nuclear plant in a
| place subject to earthquakes and tsunamis. Can 't blame the
| hippies for that one. So instead of blaming people for being
| afraid by something as terrifying as radiation, maybe let's
| work on making this really safe this time, even safe from man
| made mistakes or say, environmental hazards. If you told me
| that aeronautics is the safest well understood technology but
| each time a plane crash we would have to evacuate the whole
| area of a plane crash for at least fifty years, I'd be worried
| about planes.
| beders wrote:
| Minimizing the impact and long term effects of this is
| despicable. How dare you spit on the grave of the 1368 people
| that died as a direct and indirect consequence?
|
| Nuclear power is expensive, unreliable and the sooner we get
| rid of it, the better.
|
| Note: that doesn't mean to bring more fossil fuel power plants
| online.
|
| And this baseline myth needs to die.
| 0xTJ wrote:
| For your benefit, and the benefit of those around you, please
| watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Reality disagrees. By any objective measure, MW per MW I
| challenge you to find an energy source able to supply
| baseline (not a myth too) with a better safety profile then
| nuclear fission.
| colordrops wrote:
| Yes, hippies, the perennial scapegoats for all our problems.
| It's unfortunate how they run energy commissions, governments,
| and military organizations around the world, preventing any
| progress.
| coldtea wrote:
| And of course it was hippies who designed this reactor...
|
| And it was hippies that enabled and encouraged burning coal
| and petrol without a care in the world for centuries before
| we got nuclear (and after), not engineers...
| Black101 wrote:
| The BP oil spill[1] in the gulf of Mexico was incredibly bad
| too... specially knowing that they let it leak for months...
|
| And then they used toxic chemicals[2] that were more toxic then
| the oil itself to sink the oil to the bottom of the ocean to
| hide it all.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
|
| 2.
| https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/en...
|
| I still avoid BP gas stations whenever I can even if it
| probably doesn't help. They bought most gas stations in the
| small town I was in at the time, next to the spill. Can't wait
| for nuclear & solar power to take over ;)
| neolog wrote:
| > benefitted only a few people in journalism
|
| Some competitor industries too.
| merb wrote:
| > The amount of radiation in that water is utterly dwarfed by
| natural potassium. You can use your search engine of choice to
| find the graphic, you will laugh. Negligible.
|
| well there is a lot of sealine, which would disagree if they
| could. (they can't of course) it will have tons of impact on
| the sealife where the water will be released. it might be even
| going ways where we do not know.
|
| it's basically a tradeoff. release it in the sea and pollute
| that or worse it could in some way contain freshwater. it's not
| a black pill and such measures should probably taken with care.
|
| > What isn't negligible is the terror which benefitted only a
| few people in journalism who sold some ads with it. The human
| cost is immeasurable.
|
| if only human cost is bad, than I guarantee you that in 10-20
| years you do not want to live on this planet.
|
| we should never treat such a thing lightly no matter if it will
| only pollute 0.00001% of the plants inside the ocean.
| ddingus wrote:
| The solution to pollution is dilution.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| https://dilbert.com/strip/2003-01-03
| ddingus wrote:
| Lolol, I chuckled
| koolba wrote:
| I say this in my mind every single time I wash my hands.
| ddingus wrote:
| Interesting take.
|
| Truth in action. Simple, practical.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Well, another solution is to not pollute, because at some point
| it may not be possible to dilute.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That's not going to happen. We're going to pollute. That's
| what we do. So we have to make intelligent decisions about
| what we emit, where we emit it, and how much we emit.
| ddingus wrote:
| It is always possible to dilute. Does not always make sense
| though.
|
| No free lunches here.
|
| No matter what we do, there are costs and risks. And no
| matter what, our nature tends to take us well down a path to
| a point of real pain before those costs change behavior too.
|
| If we valued things differently, we would pollute and manage
| things differently, but we don't.
|
| Maybe one day we will.
|
| I agree with you, but am just being real about our nature.
| trhway wrote:
| >The solution to pollution is dilution.
|
| it has been proven times and times again that such a "solution"
| doesn't work. Just an example
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at...
|
| Similar to the CO2, the issue in this case isn't the polluted
| water from one plant. The issue is the practice of dumping of
| stuff into the oceans. Allowing such practice to go forward
| will quickly lead to the ocean not able to "dilute" anymore to
| safe concentration the stuff we'd be dumping into it.
|
| And on pure economics grounds - why should they be allowed to
| externalize their cost (which the dumping is) instead of
| bearing it?
| wffurr wrote:
| Obviously the answer is to make more atmosphere and/or ocean!
| trhway wrote:
| we have the whole Solar system waiting for our stuff to be
| dumped there.
| ddingus wrote:
| Getting it out is ultra high risk.
| Guvante wrote:
| Does this have anything to do with radioactive water?
|
| They aren't dumping radioactive waste, just water that has
| become radioactive from being near radioactive waste.
| trhway wrote:
| >They aren't dumping radioactive waste, just water that has
| become radioactive from being near radioactive waste.
|
| radioactive waste water is radioactive waste.
| Guvante wrote:
| So you are just using the "technically correct" phrase
| designed to make it sound dangerous?
|
| Dilution amount totally matters in this context. For
| instance the EPA limit means if all of your drinking
| water was at that limit you would increase the amount of
| radiation exposure by 1.3% per year. Would that be
| "radioactive waste"?
| trhway wrote:
| >So you are just using the "technically correct" phrase
| designed to make it sound dangerous?
|
| do you propose to use less technically correct phrase to
| make it sound less dangerous?
|
| >Would that be "radioactive waste"?
|
| may as well be. The biological impact of getting
| radiation sources into your body vs. being just exposed
| to it externally is very different (specifically
| significantly more severe) in case of alpha and beta
| sources.
| ddingus wrote:
| You mean doesn't always work, right?
|
| Containment is another option we sometimes have available to
| us, when we cannot transform the waste otherwise.
|
| In general though, dilution is the go to.
|
| In this scenario, we will end up forced to live with
| dilution. Containment is crazy, and the core itself is likely
| to end up in the water cycle. Breakdown takes a looooong
| time.
| dang wrote:
| Past related threads, including one from a few days ago:
|
| _Suga says time ripe to decide fate of Fukushima No.1 water_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739686 - April 2021 (54
| comments)
|
| _Fukushima: Japan will have to dump radioactive water into
| Pacific, minister says_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20925770 - Sept 2019 (30
| comments)
|
| _Radioactive water at Fukushima Daiichi: What should be done?
| (2018)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304208 - June
| 2019 (61 comments)
|
| _No One Knows What to Do with Fukushima's Endless Tanks of
| Radioactive Water_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9689554
| - June 2015 (135 comments)
|
| _Japan nuclear body says radioactive water at Fukushima an
| 'emergency'_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6160977 - Aug
| 2013 (125 comments)
| Causality1 wrote:
| Correct decision. The water only contains 0.76 PBq of tritium.
| That's only half the radiation US nuclear plants dump every year.
| passerby1 wrote:
| What's the reason for the US nuclear plants to dump it?
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I think they are making electricity.
| dathinab wrote:
| They are allowed to do so, like in so many other countries.
|
| It turns out dumping liquid radioactive wast into oceans is
| fine (law wise, if only radioactive and not otherwise
| problematic etc.)......
| egb wrote:
| Cringely has some columns about this:
|
| https://www.cringely.com/2021/03/26/10-years-later-fukushima...
| dathinab wrote:
| Well a lot of countries did (and some still do) send liquid radio
| active wast into the oceans.
|
| Supposedly it's all fine "because it get's diluted enough".
|
| But guess what, increased health issues of people "close" to the
| place it gets released clearly show that this isn't really the
| case. At least for the people close by.
|
| But then it might be true on the bug picture and it just needs
| time to be diluted, in which case a one-time release (instead of
| continual ones I'm speaking about) might be fine.
|
| More importantly is to learn from all the problems which made the
| catastrophe worse. A recurring theme is "known" problems not have
| been known by the people operating it (i.e. they didn't reach
| them) and emergency plans having gaps.
|
| So like always it's more a human then a technical problem.
|
| But then human problems _always_ happen.
| jshmrsn wrote:
| "But guess what, increased health issues of people "close" to
| the place it gets released clearly show that this isn't really
| the case. At least for the people close by."
|
| Do you have a link/source for this?
| Animats wrote:
| Well, it's been 10 years, so tritium is half as radioactive now.
| kenned3 wrote:
| It is equally radioactive as it was 10 years ago, but now there
| is half of it left.
|
| While i am very supportive of nuclear power, this idea of half-
| life seems misunderstood. what remains is just as
| radioactive... Just now there is less of it.
| t8e56vd4ih wrote:
| I'm pretty sure intensity is proportional to "what's left".
| ascar wrote:
| If there are half as many radioactive isotopes left then the
| material is also half as radioactive, as radioactivity is
| measured in decays per second (Becquerel [1]).
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel
| forgetfulness wrote:
| It doesn't say how they're going to release it though. Are they
| just going to flush it by the shore? Wouldn't you want to
| actually spread it out as much as possible and as far away as you
| can, rather than have it concentrated right next to where you and
| lots of fauna live?
| pm90 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > The following month, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings,
| the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, drafted a plan to
| dilute the water to below the legal limit for concentration of
| radioactive materials before releasing it in the sea.
|
| Presumably that's safe to dump into the sea shore when it's
| that diluted.
| freetime2 wrote:
| Yup and will further dilute by orders of magnitude once
| released into the open ocean.
| ghodith wrote:
| Can anyone explain to me why this would be preferred over the
| alternative they mention in the article of evaporating the water?
| etiam wrote:
| Not sure how much it matters for the difference in risks after
| dilution, but beta radiation probably has short reach in water
| compared to air.
|
| From the perspective of the people releasing the radioactive
| water, evaporating it would give them larger volumes of a
| material that is more difficult to manage before it disperses
| and in medium where more of the radiation reaches further.
|
| Seems like the main environmental concern ought to be
| absorption into tissues though, and it's not at all clear to me
| that highly active marine ecosystems with long food chains is
| the preferable alternative there.
| kenned3 wrote:
| you would need a tritium refinement plant, like what we have in
| Ontario.
|
| Tritium is also produced in heavy water-moderated reactors
| whenever a deuterium nucleus captures a neutron. This reaction
| has a quite small absorption cross section, making heavy water
| a good neutron moderator, and relatively little tritium is
| produced. Even so, cleaning tritium from the moderator may be
| desirable after several years to reduce the risk of its
| escaping to the environment. Ontario Power Generation's
| "Tritium Removal Facility" processes up to 2,500 tonnes (2,500
| long tons; 2,800 short tons) of heavy water a year, and it
| separates out about 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) of tritium, making it
| available for other uses.[13]
|
| you dont really want to just "evaporate the water" but
| "distill" it, same as making alcohol... the boiling points are
| very close and it is expensive to process that much water.
| garmaine wrote:
| The radioactive water still goes somewhere. Would you rather it
| go into the ocean or into our lungs and crops?
| busymom0 wrote:
| I am uneducated at the science behind it but wouldn't
| evaporating method only result in the water being evaporated
| and not the "radioactive stuff" in it? Similar to how Bear
| Gryls would evaporate urine to make clean drinkable water.
| DuskStar wrote:
| The radioactive stuff is still chemically water.
| asymmetric wrote:
| You seem to imply the ocean is a clearly better option -- I'm
| not sure it is? Harm will come to us and other animals either
| way, the extent seems a bit hard to assess and depends highly
| on what one values.
| eganist wrote:
| The water can stop beta particles far more effectively than
| the air (2in v. 10ft), which minimizes the risk to life
| forms save for those which directly interact with tritium
| water, but even then, there's far more water in the ocean
| for tritium water to dilute into. In the air, the water
| will still get invariably pulled into the water cycle,
| wherein it condenses into rain, enters streams and lakes,
| plants, life, etc. where it can't as effectively dilute.
|
| Would love for a nuclear or environmental researcher to
| fact-check me here. I'm out of my depth. I'm just applying
| the trivia that I know.
| skrause wrote:
| This "what if" xkcd is somewhat relevant: https://what-
| if.xkcd.com/74/
|
| The _vast_ majority of water molecules in the oceans have
| never been drunk by any human ever.
| rnhmjoj wrote:
| I'm just a physics student by incidentally I'm
| researching tritium right now. Tritium is one of the
| least toxic radionuclide because the b radiation it emits
| is very low energy, also the biological half life is only
| 10 days (it means it's quickly eliminated by the body):
| unless you ingest very large quantities of it, you're
| probably going to be fine. In fact, the range of the
| electrons is even less than you quote: around 5 mm in air
| and 6 mm in water, which means it's effectively stopped
| by the dead skin layer. If I were to decide, I would
| probably pick dilution in water over vaporisation.
| eganist wrote:
| > around 5 mm in air and 6 mm in water
|
| Interesting. My source re: beta radiation was (admittedly
| a nuclear promotion nonprofit)
| http://nuclearconnect.org/know-nuclear/science/protecting
|
| > b BETA - can only be stopped after traveling through
| about 10 feet of air, less than 2 inches of water, or a
| thin layer of glass or metal. Additional covering, for
| example heavy clothing, is necessary to protect against
| beta-emitters. Some beta particles can penetrate and burn
| the skin.
|
| I won't be surprised if you're right, but if a nonprofit
| getting government grants to promote the nuclear industry
| gets it wrong, I'd be pretty worried.
| ddingus wrote:
| Harm was going to come to us, post event, no matter what.
|
| Some argue we are not good enough at these things, meaning
| harm will come to us every time we generate energy this
| way. The only real question being us or future people, near
| or longer term harm.
|
| Say we set that aside as a matter of ambiguity and just
| focus on type of harm. (My own take is we will generate
| energy this way, so we may as well fund serious risk
| mitigation of all kinds.)
|
| We have only one option here longer term, and that is
| dilution.
|
| Normally, we have two, the other being containment. (And,
| given we do make energy this way, strong investment in
| containment makes a lot of sense.)
|
| And in this scenario, we have both contaminated water to
| deal with and a core likely to enter the water cycle itself
| at some point too. It will, at that time, irradiate water
| for a long time.
|
| Is the harm in the atmosphere greater than in water?
|
| It will go somewhere. IMHO, the water is a better shield
| and has far greater capacity to serve as a medium to dilute
| in than the air does.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Which marine products are they referring to:
|
| The government had initially hoped to make a decision on the
| discharge of the treated water in October last year but later
| decided it would need more time for discussions amid staunch
| concern about reputational damage to marine products.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Seafood for domestic and international consumption.
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(page generated 2021-04-11 23:00 UTC)