Some of you may die, but that’s a chance we’re willing to take
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No for real it is negligible.
The thing about radiation is that the dosage is what matters so having all that tritium in one water tank is bad because it’s concentrated but very slowly leaking it into the ocean where it’s diluted so rapidly you won’t be able to detect it is truly harmless.
Anger at this is misguided. It’s the correct decision. Holding the stuff concentrated in one place is an ecological disaster waiting to happen - let’s say another tsunami hits and it all gets released at one now that’s a problem but sending an actually small volume into the ocean everyday that’s not even going to register as background noise.
radiation-wise you’re correct, but I’m not sure the same holds true for some of the isotopes themselves. Admittedly, I’m neither physicist nor biologist, so my knowledge here is limited at best, but as far as I’m aware, certain particles can bio-accumulate and bio-magnify along food-chains and make entire species inedible as a result. The radiation doesn’t even have to be that strong, once that shit is inside of you, there will be cancer. I’m thinking for example of mushrooms in Germany after Chernobyl - the radiation levels in forests overall were mostly fine shortly after the disaster but mushrooms remained (and I think, remain to this day, at least in certain regions?) inedible due to the accumulation of isotopes they manage to accomplish through their wide-and-deep-reaching mycelium networks. Of course, anything eating the mushrooms also becomes inedible. Which literally lead to radioactive hogs, but that’s for another time.
As long as nature lives, there are constant accumulation processes happening and they may just end up gathering all that finely diluted stuff together again. Again, I’m no expert and I’m sure the experts have taken at least some of this into account - and still I remain skeptical in regards to the harmlessness of this release, just because dumping nuclear waste-water in statistically-negligible and expert-certified safe manner has been a pretty standard procedure for the UK nuclear sector - and over the years I’ve heard enough critiques of that, to at least remain skeptical. Maybe anger is misguided, sure, it often is - but maybe unquestioning acceptance of it as the only rational thing to do, is too.
Not disagreeing on principle here, but I am not sure this is an apples to apples comparison. The Chernobyl meltdown caused the uncontrolled release of large amounts of radioactive cadmium. Fungi (unlike most plants) tend to be less discriminatory about what metals they pick up from the soil because they’re capable of sequestering the harmful stuff in their cell walls. This isn’t to say that bioaccumulation up the food chain doesn’t also happen in the oceans (the mercury problem in fish is caused by releases from coal plants), but this is (a) much smaller, (b) treated to reduce the radioactive heavy metals, and © not into soil, where things have a chance to persist and accumulate.
You’re right that this isn’t an exactly viable comparison. Though there do seem to be signs that tritium too, is subject to biomagnification. I’ve posted a link below
Edit: for clarity, here’s the link again. The main takeaway for me is that phytoplankton can make tritium bio-available and that this bio-available form of tritium is both getting bio-magnified up the food-chain and is entirely disregarded by current legislation, since the bio-available form of tritium is technically in a different chemical configuration. If I’m getting any of this wrong, feel free to correct me, everyone
I love getting reminded that I don’t actually know shit and that’s a very good reason to not be reactionary. Thank you, I gotta read into this a little more.
I have a vague background as a nuclear technician, (very far removed from that life) so I initially thought this was more reactionary behavior against nuclear energy. Nuclear powered ocean vessels also treat their water and release it into the ocean. Dilution is the solution sort of, but tritium becoming bio-available is not something I’ve heard mentioned here.
That’s an interesting, read, thanks for sharing! For what it’s worth, the study used massively higher doses of tritium than what’s being released: 10 million becquerels/L in the study water (which is 1,000x the drinking water limit) compared with - per Reuters - 63 becquerels/L in the wastewater.
I stopped short of saying that I didn’t think there would be environmental harm because it does seem like there’s cause for concern, even if the tritium has a relatively short half life. But I don’t know if the claims being made by opponents are justified.
This is one of those things where it might actually be negligible, but both the nuclear energy and oil capitalists have such huge amounts of money behind the sides of the argument that the only way of knowing would be to actually look at the science yourself, and no one is going to do that
The science is crystal clear on tritium being absorbed like calcium into bones leading to cancer. It’s a slow death tho so who cares right? Nobody wants to live forever.
It’s a purely economic decision. Everyone even my friends in Japan oppose it. But we don’t live in a democracy and the rich sure as fuck aren’t going to eat irradiated fish I can guarantee you that.
But, lets consider the alternative for a minute it would be more dangerous to have the residues idling in metal containers, that creates the risk of non controlled spills due to natural disasters, mismanagement, human error, and, of course, wear and tear.
So, we are currently in across road with two solutions. Taking into mind that tritium has a half-life of 12 years, meaning that in 12 years half of its mass would have become helium and beta radiation, the kind of radiation you can stop with a thin alluminium layer. Taking this into account, to spill or not to spill becomes a matter of “until when is safe to store the water” and “when has the tritium decomposed to acceptable levels”. We must, too, bear in mind that the tritium will decompose, either on the water tanks or on the sea.
Now we are not talking about “if”, but about “when”.
To me that sounds like it would be entirely feasible to wait out at least some of that tritium decay before washing your hands of it. But 12/24/… years of storage and management costs money of course, so the capitalist answer will always be “at your earliest convenience” regarding that when
So if the tritium is the main concern here and it’s been almost 12 years… half of it should have already decayed… were the levels so high that the remaining amount is a large concern? Also, wasn’t the water treated in some way to try and remove some of the radiated water?
What does tritium decay in to?
Read the post I replied to.
tritium is hydrogen with two extra neutrons. so it emits an electron, converting one of the neutrons into a proton via B- decay, becoming helium-3. helium-3 being helium, it escapes into the atmosphere and eventually leaves the planet.
Ah, ye olde solution to pollution is dilution, huh?
It kind of is, to be fair. Until the diluted stuff bioaccumulates, biomagnifies up the food-chain and ends up back on your plate in not entirely diluted form but who cares about future-peoples problems, let’s just fucking dump it all, yeehaw
This is very literally a drop in the ocean.
Sure, but a single particle of that drop when ingested may cause cancer (because there’s no thin film of aluminium inside of your body), the entire oceanic eco-system is one extremely complex filtering system for water - and a whole bunch of people get a substantial part of their diet from the sea.
Also, from a cursory search I found this. Quote:
Accumulations of organic tritium into the mussel tissues from tritiated-phytoplankton demonstrate an environmentally relevant transfer pathway of tritium even when water-concentrations are reduced, adding weight to the assertion that organically bound tritium acts as a persistent organic pollutant. The persistence, potential for biomagnification and the increased toxicity of organic tritium increases the potential impact on the environment following a release of HTO; current legislation does not adequately take into account the nature of organic forms of tritium and therefore may be underestimating accumulation and toxic effect of tritium in the environment.
There’s a bunch more in the related articles below.
Yeah if you’re in a hail of bullets but you only catch one I guess it’s a win. Nice to remember how rain works too. Ocean heats, water evaporates, radioactive rain falls into our drinking water.
It takes so little tritium to cause cancer. But hey as long as people getting paid amirite
One particle of radiation is very different than a bullet.
Why the fuck does it need to be released at all?!
Because the actual cost of processing and containment is massive
That’s the trick of the entire nuclear industry. Privatized profits socialized costs. When shit fails we bail them out, even if it kills us
Begin to think how many metric tons of water are in the Pacific then get back to me. It is negligible. The greatest concern is if the water doesn’t disperse from the coastline well and the radiation gets trapped in some nook somewhere, but that’s why they release in waves
