Japan To Release Radioactive Fukushima Water Into Ocean

michael59

Celestial
The new Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshihide Suga, is facing additional international pressure over the weekend, amid reports that Japan will be accelerating plans to dump millions of gallons of radioactive water directly into the ocean. Reports have being widely circulated among Japan’s leading news agency and across international media that suggest the decision has already been taken by the new Japanese Government, and will be publicly communicated later this month. Over 1.2 million tons of radioactive cooling water from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant will be released. While the water will be treated, it will still be radioactive. 170 tons of new radioactive wastewater is generated each day and is stored in 1000 specially designed tanks. Environmentalists and local fishermen have been urging the Japanese Government to reconsider this option, after almost a decade trying to build back their reputation around the plant, where elevated radioactive levels can still be detected. South Korea still bans all seafood imports from this part of Japan, and has held urgent talks with Japanese counterparts to try and find a more measured approach to managing the Fukushima water crisis that would not risk the environment or human health. The outrage over these plans come just three weeks after Prime Minister Suga personally visited the Fukushima plant, on September 26. It follows a series of policy announcements by Japan that raises questions about how effective the country is a sustainable steward of the ocean amid the global climate and biodiversity crisis. In 2019, Japan withdrew from the International Whaling Commission to begin commercial whaling. At the UN shipping regulator, the IMO, Japan chairs the influential Environment Committee and has consistently pushed for much lower emission and pollution standards for its powerful shipping lobby. To cool radioactive fuel cores at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan had pumped 1.2 million tons of water through the rods and this water became contaminated with radioactive tritium. Once used for cooling, this radioactive tritium cannot be removed, so the water was placed into storage. Japan is now running out of space as it rushes to fully decommission the nuclear plant. The clean up has already cost the Japanese utility owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), $200 billion. According to the Japanese Ministry of Environment, its tanks will be full by 2022. Japanese Ministers under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Government had been pushing for the dumping of radioactive waste in the ocean for years. Last year, Japan's environment minister said that the only solution was to "release it into the ocean and dilute it.""There are no other options," he said. With the new Prime Minister in place, it looks like Japan wishes to move ahead quickly.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishande...

 

AD1184

Celestial
The amount of water is a red herring. What matters is the amount and the type of radionuclides contained in the water.
 

michael59

Celestial
The amount of water is a red herring. What matters is the amount and the type of radionuclides contained in the water.

These answer given below are what I found by googling the question, "What type of radionuclides would be in nuclear waste water from Japan?"

The primary releases of radioactive nuclides have been iodine and caesium; strontium and plutonium have also been found. These elements have been released into the air via steam; and into the water leaking into groundwater or the ocean.

Tepco has attempted to remove most radionuclides from the excess water, but the technology does not exist to rid the water of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Coastal nuclear plants commonly dump water that contains tritium into the ocean. It occurs in minute amounts in nature.
 

AD1184

Celestial
I have found more information on this issue since the last postings in this thread.

https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20160915_01a.pdf

The water that Japan is to start dumping into the ocean is 860,000 cubic metres of partially tritiated water. Tritiated means that some of the hydrogen atoms making up the water molecules are tritium, an isotope of hydrogen with two neutrons. The most abundant form of hydrogen consists of a proton in its nucleus. A hydrogen atom with a neutron is called deuterium, because there are two nucleons, and with a second neutron is called tritium, because there are three nucleons in total. Deuterium is stable, but tritium is radioactive.

The amount of tritium in the water was 2.1 grammes in 2016, equivalent then to 14 millilitres of pure tritiated water, of which there should be about 1.6 g presently, given the decay rate of tritium, equal to about 11 mL of pure tritrated water. There was a measured specific radioactivity of 330 kilobecquerels per litre in 2016, meaning that there should be about 232 kBq /L presently. This means that there are 232,000 radioactive decay events every second in one litre of the water. This compares with around 20 kBq in the average human body.

The main contributors to human radioactivity are beta emitters (potassium 40, and carbon 14) like tritium. A beta emission is an electron emitted from the nucleus of the atom, which typically causes a neutron to change into a proton. The beta particles emitted by tritium are at a lower energy than those released in the body, however. There are about 8 giga-electron-volts of beta particles emitted in the body every second, compared to about 4.3 GeV/s in a litre of the titriated water in Fukushima.

The Japanese government wants to slowly release this water into the ocean over decades, the ecological and health effects of which will be nil. The psychological effects on people who lack an understanding are what must be managed.
 
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nivek

As Above So Below
The Japanese government wants to slowly release this water into the ocean over decades, the ecological and health effects of which will be nil.

Released over decades is preferrable over dumping all in one year or something similar...The effects should be minimal as you said, however there is always a chance for some illegal dumping to occur periodically so the site and waste water must be diligently monitored...

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