6 votes

Japan forges ahead with plan to release Fukushima treated wastewater into sea (2023)

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3 comments

  1. [2]
    vektor
    Link
    Important to note that everything radioactive except tritium was filtered off. It's basically chemically pure water afaict, with increased tritium levels. AFAIK, tritium contamination is mostly a...

    Important to note that everything radioactive except tritium was filtered off. It's basically chemically pure water afaict, with increased tritium levels. AFAIK, tritium contamination is mostly a consequence of neutron activation, so should be fairly minute levels. All the really bad stuff is separated off.

    It's also not really viable to treat further, as that basically amount to heavy water separation, which is energy intensive.

    Annoyingly, tritium's half life is in the bothersome range that's too long to simply let decay, at meast at this concentration, and too short to treat as basically stable.

    8 votes
    1. DefinitelyNotAFae
      Link Parent
      The omission of treated in the website headline is such a deliberate choice...

      The omission of treated in the website headline is such a deliberate choice...

      3 votes
  2. atchemey
    Link
    This article is almost two years old. I'm literally a nuclear scientist. This stuff is not the waste to worry about. They dumped it a long time ago, it's now diluted and spread everywhere. There...

    This article is almost two years old.

    I'm literally a nuclear scientist. This stuff is not the waste to worry about. They dumped it a long time ago, it's now diluted and spread everywhere. There wasn't enough tritium to make it a threat when diluted (or, arguably, even before), but it is still the sort of thing that we rightfully have regulatory oversight on. If an operating reactor keeps dumping tritium, something is wrong... Obviously that's not the case here.

    3 votes