Japan plans to release Fukushima water as early as August 24th
Japan plans to release Fukushima water as early as August 24th
Anxious about Japan’s impending release of treated nuclear wastewater from the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant, hundreds of South Koreans marched in their capital Saturday.
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Good, it's about time. Tritiated water just isn't dangerous. The ocean naturally contains billions of tons of URANIUM. A few kilograms of short lived tritium isn't going to matter at all.
Finally someone who understands it's not as scary as news want it to sound like.
Wait I get that the ocean is gigantic but billions of tons?
Yep. Best estimate I have seen is 4.5 billion tons of uranium. Course, most of the natural radioactivity of our ocean is from potassium, actually. But either way, natural levels of radioactivity will not change.
4 billion tons at 3 ppb... It's so much water, don't try to drink it either.
For anyone curious:
From Wikipedia:
The total mass of Earth's hydrosphere is about 1.4 × 10^18 tonnes, which is about 0.023% of Earth's total mass.
Better yet, the water they're releasing has less tritium in it than average ocean water, so releasing it will actually be an improvement for the ocean (190 vs avg of 500 of some unit)
This is what I’ve heard too. It’s really no big deal. Concerned local fishermen are probably just not introduced to the physics of this. In general, humans tend to worry a bit more about radioactivity than necessary. This in particular will be diluted into basically nothing. The only real problem is the PR work that lies ahead for them. In practice, their people should probably be more concerned about constantly dying early from pollution and protest more about that.
Thing is, they're not gonna spread it out across the oceans of the world. They're gonna release it off the coast of Japan, and it will take time before it's spread around and diluted. It might very well affect the fauna and flora off the coast of Japan, which makes it a concern of South Korea and China as well.
Even if we believe the impact of oceanic life to be minimal, it might still very much affect the perception of Chinese and Korean seafood and worry domestic and foreign consumers. What China and South Korea are complaining about is that Japan was supposed to consult all impacted parties on this release, which they are not doing.
At the end of the day, it's entirely possible this release is harmless, but I don't think Korea and China are wrong to raise concerns here.
It's not that the impact will be minimal, it is that it will not be present. It's not that it's possible that the release will be harmless. It's a fact that it will be harmless. China and Korea are "raising concerns" because if they can economically punish the Japanese for being monsters during WW2 and the Japanese occupation of Korea, they will. And they'll do that whether the water is properly released now or if we futz about for ten more years and THEN release it.