“If people eat this kind of contaminated food, it will affect the health of millions and millions of people, for many, many years.” Observers say Japan’s discharging of nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean may pose long-term threats to human health and the marine environment.

  • pigginz@lemmygrad.ml
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    10 months ago

    People love overreacting to any high-profile nuclear energy news, especially when it has a political character. The IAEA has a comprehensive report on this (https://www.iaea.org/topics/response/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-accident/fukushima-daiichi-alps-treated-water-discharge) and, while I’m not a nuclear energy expert, just an enthusiast, it’s all predictably mundane and low-risk and there’s many, many far more dangerous sources of ocean pollution that never get nearly this amount of attention.

    However,

    For one thing, dumping into the ocean wasn’t the only realistic option, vapor release was also an option. More expensive and harder to monitor, yes, but in the event of some kind of unlikely cataclysmic fuck-up (which has never happened in the history of nuclear energy, as we all know), the fallout would likely be more contained to Japan rather than distributed to every nearby country’s seafood supply.

    That Japan chose the option that saves money but, in an incredibly improbable worst case scenario, results in maximizing contamination to it’s neighbors, was either extremely short sighted and stupid or intentionally inflammatory. Of course people in China were going to react this way. In all likelihood it’s an overreaction but it’s also a reaction that anyone with even a cursory knowledge of nuclear energy history could have predicted. Throw in the history of shit Japan has done to China and it’s no wonder that they’re furious for being expected to trust a Japanese corporation with their best interests.

    That’s the real issue here, and arguing over the technical details of safety doesn’t address it. Japan had multiple options here, and chose self interest and cost cutting over cooperation with and consideration for it’s neighbors, and China is perfectly justified in being unhappy with that outcome.

    • Darkerseid@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      Fukushima was a nuclear disaster, suffering three nuclear meltdowns. The water has become contaminated and radioactive after coming into contact with the nuclear core. No other nuclear plant in the world is doing that. Greenpeace Japan lists other isotopes in Fukushima nuclear contaminated waste water including but not limited to strontium-90, which causes bone cancer

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        10 months ago

        Correct, but the water is processed to remove all the other radionuclides first. The really nasty stuff that causes all the horrible cancers and radiation burns and stuff is separated and stored/disposed of through other processes. That’s the theory anyway, and based on the IAEA report seems to be the current practice as well. But this process is going to take years and since TEPCO is a publicly traded for-profit enterprise, concerns that cut corners and lax safety measures could lead to either untreated water or dangerous concentrations of tritiated water being released in the future aren’t unfounded.

        It makes me think of hydraulic fracturing. Pretty safe when done correctly, but profit-motivated corporations absolutely cannot be trusted to do things correctly. We can only hope that the ongoing IAEA oversight is enough. Or that the economic backlash is enough to convince the Japanese government to change course to a plan that it’s neighbors can feel confident about.

        • Darkerseid@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          IAEA says “Views expressed in this document do not necessarily reflect those of IAEA member states”

          It’s safe to say that this is Japanese Govt. decision, IAEA has no bearing the the final decision

          • pigginz@lemmygrad.ml
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            10 months ago

            Yes. IAEA is monitoring the situation and compiled a report based on their findings, but it isn’t their decision nor does the report represent an endorsement of the plan. I don’t think I ever said that it was?

    • iridaniotter [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      How would vapor release have been better? That just sounds like choosing to release it into the atmospheric global commons instead of the oceanic global commons, so people would make the same complaints. Is there any data showing expected radiation dispersal in the air vs the ocean?

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        10 months ago

        I wish I could find a detailed study on this but I’m not having much luck unfortunately. Based on my knowledge of undergraduate physics and chemistry though, I think it goes something like this:

        Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen. Water is H2O and the tritium here occupies some of those hydrogen atoms. This is why it can’t be filtered out, because you’re trying to separate water from slightly different but basically chemically identical water. If conducted properly, both options for diluting and releasing this stuff is quite safe.

        But let’s say some untreated waste water gets released. The water that has all kinds of unpleasant isotopes and toxic heavy metals. If that gets dumped into the ocean, it enters the food chain and gets carried around by ocean currents and ends up everywhere. Water vapor is different through because the tritium is chemically part of the water. Caesium, iodine, lanthanum, whatever the fuck else, isn’t part of the water, it’s dissolved in the water, and when you vaporize water, the other elements don’t go with it (this is how distillation works). Highly toxic, really bad stuff, even if it was thrown into the air in a plume of steam or something, will tend settle out or get rained out near the source because it’s, y’know, heavy. Furthermore, vaporizing water takes more time and energy than just dumping it in the ocean, so even in some catastrophic failure scenario the rate of release of the worst contaminants would probably be much, much slower with the vapor option meaning less damage done before the problem is detected and fixed.

        China and Russia recommended the vapor release option, which seems to suggest that the tritiated water isn’t their main concern, it ends up on their coasts regardless. I think that also is strong evidence that any articles or editorials focusing on tritium are sensationalist nonsense because if the tritium was the issue, China and Russia wouldn’t have wanted a vapor release solution either.

        • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          I think another part of their concern with different isotopes was the source of the tests. The company responsible for testing is also the owner of the power plant. As shown so many times in the past, we can always fall back on our trust in parties with a conflict of capital interest.

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            10 months ago

            Bingo. The IAEA can monitor things all they want, but a big part of the plan still involves taking TEPCO and the Japanese NRA at their word because they’re the ones that actually implement the plan.

            It’s probably going to be fine, but even if it is, “I’m doing what I want, just trust me bro” isn’t how a reasonable government conducts relations with it’s neighbors. Even if they are right and even if they do already have the best plan (extremely debatable), cooperation, education, and building consensus should still be the next step, not unilaterally making decisions that piss off hundreds of millions of people without addressing their concerns.

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            10 months ago

            Again, I just enjoy physics and nuclear energy though so don’t quote me on any of this, haha.

              • pigginz@lemmygrad.ml
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                10 months ago

                Can you share what you found, either here or DM? I’d like to know more. I’d especially like to know how this stacks up to Three Mile Island where I believe they opted for some kind of similar vapor release solution, but Google tends to confuse with the accidental contaminated steam/radioactive gas release during the disaster event itself.

    • Life2Space@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      I thought that the controversy was because the Fukushima wastewater made contact with the exposed core of the nuclear plant. This introduced — not only more dangerous isotopes — but also greater amounts of it, compared to regular wastewater.

      • pigginz@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        Yeah. Theoretically, the water that’s being released has been processed to remove all the nasty stuff though, all that remains is low concentrations of tritium. I don’t know the precise details of Russia, China, and Korea’s official concerns, but I suspect they’re very concerned with the possibility that unprocessed wastewater could end up being dumped, intentionally or unintentionally.

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          10 months ago

          Tepco will monitor the radioactivity of the processed water at various stages as well as the ocean water at the discharge site.

          Ah yes because Tepco was never caught lying about measurements in the past. Your security assurances are useless if there is no way to make sure the filtering is actually done. You assume we suddeny forgot about them constantly lying in the past. They are all Samurai with an honor code, there is no way a private company will engage in cost cutting, right?

              • TomHardy@lemmy.ml
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                10 months ago

                What evidence? You posted some damage control article (“Tepco said trust me bro, so its aight”) of the crackerverse countries now ordered to publish everywhere to defend their battle slave. “We need to keep our people’s opinion of Japan high, we might need to use them as a second Ukraine later”. Wouldn’t even surprise me if our Bri’ish gents already banned imports from affected regions lmao

                there’s a lot of anti-nuclear bullcrap fearmongering going on here and judging by the ☭ in some names it cant be a coincidence

                You must confuse them with Germans, for which nuclear energy is like black magic nowadays. The position of “☭”-enjoyers is actually consistent, as it really makes no sense to leave the filtering and dumping to a well-known lying private enterprise, that’s not even that hard to understand. And the IAEA, which received suddenly $1-2 million (alias got bribed) from Japan.

        • 新星 [he/him/CPC bot]@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          Tritium has a half-life of only 12 years. In 80 years, 99% of it is gone.

          I would be more concerned that the filtration system wasn’t sufficient enough to remove more dangerous radioactive contaminants. I believe that’s what the countries around who are opposed or skeptical are concerned about.

            • 新星 [he/him/CPC bot]@lemmygrad.ml
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              10 months ago

              12 years have already passed, so 50% is already gone.

              How much is enough? 1% of a large concentration is quite different than 50% of a small concentration. Shouldn’t we compare this in units of concentration instead of vaguely defined percentages?

              Also, why are we focusing on the tritium? Are you confident that everything else is filtered so we don’t have to worry about the rest?

              • Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml
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                10 months ago

                If the radiation from the water is negligible compared to background radiation, then it should be safe for consumption, given that all toxic substances are removed.

                The fact that they didn’t provide the evidence showing the lack of radioactivity is indicative that they are releasing it prematurely. The fact that they mentioned a lack of space is indicative of a monetary reason.

                They ran out of funding to hold the toxic radioactive water, so they’re dumping it out into the ocean.

              • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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                10 months ago

                What kind of logic is that.

                Your solution is that storing it for 80 years is bad because 1% is left, so let’s dump 100% right now???

        • Blinky_katt@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          Also, why is the talk only about tritium and carbon-14 in this report, ignoring 64 other elements present in the water that potentially contain harmful effects. The IAEA report states they only investigated these two elements by Japan’s request, it does not imply that there are no other elements they can or should also investigate, just they didn’t because they weren’t requested to.

    • comradecalzone@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      I think you might want to rephrase that. The plan isn’t really to “release contaminated water,” but rather treated and diluted water.

      Leftist spaces are also more likely to express backlash at anything that may contaminate the environment, with good reason. You need to consider your audience, and consequently, your rhetoric.