It's really sad the guardian doesn't quantify at all how contaminated the water is. This basically has no news value because of it. Is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea? No way to tell without any hard numbers.
Very good twitter thread on this thing, with numbers and detailled explanations (in French, sorry): <a href="https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1164497983402053634" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1164497983402053634</a><p>Check also his other threads, it's a gold mine
Here comes the excuses. Who was irresponsible in the past, will be irresponsible in the future if is allowed to do so. I would not expect a different response.<p>Alaska, British Columbia and the rest of US West Coast will eat the garbage shaped as fishes, by courtesy of sea currents, (and is obvious that nobody cares). Strange times.
They've been dumping (or leaking) hundreds of tons of radioactive water into the Pacific every day since the incident in 2011. It sounds like they will have to dump <i>more</i>, as a controlled release.<p>> [using groundwater] to prevent the three damaged reactor cores from melting<p>> [built] a frozen underground wall to prevent groundwater reaching the three damaged reactor buildings [which reduced the flow]..to about 100 tonnes a day.<p>> the prime minister..assured..that the situation was “under control”.<p>Not convinced.
There is a long article in two parts "Radioactive water at Fukushima Daiichi: What should be done?" [1,2] which was previously discussed here at Hacker News [3].<p>The thing I find most interesting is that even the Fukushima fishermen agree that dumping the water will be harmless, but they are still very opposed to it because they think consumers will be irrationally scared and not buy fish caught in the Fukushima region.<p>> Over the course of our long conversation, Sawada frankly acknowledged that the scientific consensus indicates very low risk if the water is released. “It’s not a question of scientific understanding,” he said. “We understand that tritiated water is released from other nuclear power plants in Japan and around the world. But we think it will be impossible for the public in general to understand why tritium is considered low risk, and expect there will be a large new backlash against Fukushima marine products no matter how scientifically it is explained.” I pointed out that the [fishery] coops agreed to the release of the subdrain and bypass water from Daiichi, and asked what was different about this. He pointed out that in those cases, the water is pumped out before it is contaminated, and the public seems to understand that the contamination levels are already very low.<p>[1] <a href="https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-1-radioactive-water-at-fukushima-daiichi-what-should-be-done/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-1-radioactive-water-a...</a>
[2] <a href="https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-2-radioactive-water-at-fukushima-daiichi-what-should-be-done/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-2-radioactive-water-a...</a>
[3] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304208" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304208</a>
It seems they have primarily isolated the remaining contaminant to tritium?<p>This seems like it might be a nice source of tritium for tritium deuterium fusion reactors? I am quite sure I am missing some fairly critical elements here... but it certainly would be lovely if that was the solution. (I mean, there are not exactly a lot of fusion reactors... heh).
I suppose the problem is the other contaminants, because tritium removal isn't too difficult. Cost must be the real problem. Nothing cheaper than dumping it in the ocean.<p><a href="https://www.nuclearsolutions.veolia.com/en/our-expertise/technologies/our-modular-detritiation-system-mds-remove-tritium" rel="nofollow">https://www.nuclearsolutions.veolia.com/en/our-expertise/tec...</a>
I guess we get to role play all those nuclear wasteland games in real life.<p>Just kidding. Wasn’t there a calc a while back that the concentrations are actually that bad? ie in some cases barely noticable against background radiation