Japan may have to dump radioactive water into the sea, minister says

[demmiblue]

Source: Reuters

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power (9501.T) will have to dump radioactive water from its destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean as it runs out of room to store it, the environment minister said on Tuesday.

Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, has collected more than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water from the cooling pipes used to keep fuel cores from melting since the plant was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

“The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it,” the minister, Yoshiaki Harada, told a news briefing in Tokyo.

“The whole of the government will discuss this, but I would like to offer my simple opinion.”

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-water-idUSKCN1VV0CC

[soryang]

1. Tepco rejected all but the cheapest bid for treating the water before dumping it

...according to prior reports. The most expensive bid was in the same range as the cost of the Tokyo Olympics. Japanese fisherman in the region oppose the plan to dump the radioactive water.

[turbinetree]

2. Just great..................as a speices we are really stupid

yes there are natural decay of any radiation isotopes, but the human species is stupid, and I mean stupid, since the planet is already one gigantic cesspool whats a little more man made isotopes in the ocean, what could possibly go wrong, that hasn't already gone wrong, I know outta sight outta mind thingy, just dumb it in the ocean and it will be off the news cycle and stupid humans will forget, after all the ocean is just becoming one big turd hole of waste.................................................

[exboyfil]

5. Especially when you consider how important

seafood is in the Japanese diet.

[turbinetree]

6. Yepper spot on.............................

[Bayard]

3. NO!

They do not get to contaminate the rest of the planet because they can't solve their own problems. They have the capacity to store it until 2022. Use these next couple years to figure out an environmentally responsible solution.

This is how Godzilla got started.....

[Perseus]

8. And we know all the havoc Godzilla has created

Plus it seems impossible to get rid of Godzilla, no matter how much people try, it is like the EverReady bunny.

[hunter]

4. If I was a fish I would be cheering this.

I'd rather be very mildly radioactive and shunned by fishermen than end up on someone's dinner plate.

In any case Japan dumps worse non-radioactive toxins with a half life of forever into the ocean every day.

[Eko]

19. What toxins are you talking about that have a half life of forever?

Bear in mind a half life is
:in radioactivity, the interval of time required for one-half of the atomic nuclei of a radioactive sample to decay (change spontaneously into other nuclear species by emitting particles and energy), or, equivalently, the time interval required for the number of disintegrations per second of a radioactive material to decrease by one-half. https://www.britannica.com/science/half-life-radioactivity
or
In science, a half-life (also, as a noun, spelled half life ) is the amount of time it takes for half of a substance or entity to undergo some specified process. For example, the half-life of a radioactive substance is the amount of time it takes for half of its atoms to decay, and the half-life of a drug is the amount of time it takes before half of the active elements are either eliminated or broken down by the body. Depending on the particular substance involved, a half-life may be significantly shorter or longer than half of the substance's full period of activity. https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/half-life

We had this conversation before with something you picked and I showed you where the half life of that toxin was far less than radioactive elements, but you might have figured something else out so I am asking.

[yaesu]

7. after all those years of fighting Godzilla you would think they'd have learned by now that

radioactivity in the ocean is not a good idea.

[ChiTownDenny]

9. NOT ACCEPTABLE!

The Amazon is not Brazil's to destroy and the Pacific Ocean is not Japan's to destroy!

[AtheistCrusader]

10. This is a local issue. A threat to local fishing.

The Pacific is entirely too fucking big to 'destroy' in this sense.

The rain forests on the other hand.... Those we actually CAN destroy.

[ChiTownDenny]

12. Well, that's totally different then.

Nothing wrong with a little radioactivity in a big ole ocean.

[elleng]

14. Thanks.

I 'vote' for nations of the world to help build a sufficiently large 'receptacle' for ALL the contaminated water.

[AtheistCrusader]

17. It's a tiny fraction of what we have, since the 50's put directly into that ocean.

Including entire naval reactors. The whole fucking thing. (Granted they are smaller than commercial power plants)

The 'dose' under consideration here is relatively tiny. Ideally it would not exist at all, but something does have to be done with it and in this case, it's not a tragedy of the commons for all nations bordering the Pacific.

Or to put it another way, if I were offered a choice between this radioactive water, and another Deepwater Horizon, I'd turn the valves to dump the water myself with a clean conscience.

[Runningdawg]

11. As if it hasn't been leaking out all along...

[BootinUp]

13. Good grief! Nt

[Mc Mike]

15. Is this that clean green nukular power I've been hearing so much about?

[betsuni]

20. No, old facilities built on earthquake fault lines and right by the water on a tsunami-prone coast.

What could possibly happen?

[NickB79]

16. From an environmental standpoint, this is wonderful news

Not enough radiation to impact sea life much, but enough to scare away humans.

A chunk of the Japanese coastline will turn into a wildlife-rich exclusion zone, just like the booming wildlife populations in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, where they now have bears, boars, wolves and elk again.

It's a crazy day when you realize a nuclear meltdown is actually LESS harmful for the environment than everyday human activities like fishing, farming, driving and shipping.

[keithbvadu2]

18. But look at all the money saved by going cheap on the emergency generators installation.

But look at all the money saved by going cheap on the emergency generators installation.

They could have installed them on built up higher ground but saved that much money.

[NNadir]

21. Invariably, this will lead to paroxysms of stupidity, rather like the Tuna fish.

The ocean contains 500 billion curies of, um, radioactive potassium, without which all living things would die, and the planet as a whole dumps 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year, with no comment from journalists but people will carry on about this, although essentially it means, um, nothing.

It would be really, really, really interesting if people cared as much about air pollution as this issue. Air pollution kills 7 million people per year, without a single comment from Reuters.

What's in the tanks that's radioactive is mostly tritium, which is often placed in watch dials and on signs without an external power source.

It's worth noting that before being placed in the tanks, the water was preprocessed to recover cesium, so what is in the tanks is fairly low level.

It would, again, be interesting if people gave a shit about stuff that matters, but that's too much to expect I guess.