The whole situation is frustrating as both the "world is going it end" anti-nuke types and the "everything is under control" TEPCO types exaggerate and report things out of context. Tritium isn't a problem unless you inhale or ingest it as the outer layer of our skin blocks its weak beta radiation and one human lifetime will decay tritium to irrelevance. Still dumping it into the ocean is bound to be an emotional issue with the sea food heavy diet of the Japanese and their WWII history.
Still the very well followed atomic survivors have had much less long term cancer problems than most would think. And those hit by Chernobyl have had MUCH less cancer mortality than was predicted. IIRC, in Russia there were about 4000 early cases of thyroid cancer in children, but only about 10 died. Environmentalists like to present the former, but never the latter number. And since that thyroid cancer surge the best reported data shows NO further cancer of any kind above the expected baseline. Certainly not the large predicted spike, which should have been too large to cover up. There certainly was plenty radioactive cesium and strontium there, but Chernobyl makes me wonder if their toxicity is overstated. For the Japanese sake I hope that is so.
I still think it is reasonable try extracting what's already semi-contained in that water and parking it someplace safer for a few hundred years. Just don't let perfection there get in the way of doing "good enough." Getting the spent fuel somewhere safer than the damaged pools and then dismantling the reactors and recovering their escaped cores is more important. Don't let the reactions restart.
Tritium isn’t a problem unless you inhale or ingest it as the outer layer of our skin blocks its weak beta radiation and one human lifetime will decay tritium to irrelevance. Still dumping it into the ocean is bound to be an emotional issue with the sea food heavy diet of the Japanese and their WWII history.
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Ah the sweet sound of insanity....The food chain takes up tritium whether we like it or not so yes, plants, fish, humans are all going to ingest tritium. That whole “one human lifetime” is a farce since ingesting radioactive waste has negative effect on lifespan and quality of life. EMOTIONAL issue? State of the art, peer reviewed medical science has documented the hazards of exposure to radiation for decades. I recommend the BEIR VII for light reading to begin educating yourself.
It’s not just the Japanese, we all eat products from the sea. Heard of carageenan? It’s in everything. We like eating fish, don’t we? 6 months after the explosion in Fukushima, 15 out of 15 sampled food fish in San Diego had traces of Fukushima radioactive wastes in their flesh. Now, dumping of nuclear wastes has continued for two more years so we can project that concentration is increasing in the foodweb and will continue to increase for the foreseeable future.
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Still the very well followed atomic survivors have had much less long term cancer problems than most would think.
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Not true and really an irrelevant comparison. The bombs had less radiation and were not detonated over and over and over and over for years to continue release of radiation as is happening with the cores. The bombs didn’t deliver their payload to the water table, as is happening in Fukushima.
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And those hit by Chernobyl have had MUCH less cancer mortality than was predicted.
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You do know that the Soviets made it illegal for physicians to report deaths and illnesses as radiation related for 3 years after the Chernobyl disaster right? People were dropping like flies (for example, physicians in the hospital where the firemen who responded to the explosion were taken - simply no radiologic measures in place, hauling heavily contaminated people out of contaminated ambulances and right through the hospital etc.)
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IIRC, in Russia there were about 4000 early cases of thyroid cancer in children, but only about 10 died.
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Uhmmm....if you don’t count those sickened in the years when it was illegal to report illnesses from radiation, you might have a shoddy estimate at best.
The people who lived through it tell of their experiences in books like “Voices of Chernobyl” and others. The Soviets knocked down a heavily irradiated cloud heading for Moscow with old fashioned cloud seeding. The region ‘rained on’ was rural but populated. People “died in place” where the heavy contamination came down and the SOviets barred entry into the region, preventing people from retrieving or looking for family members (talked to a woman whose husband died within 4 months of Chernobyl and she talked about the rural village where her aunt lived - everyone “down” and no entry including bringing water/food to any potential survivors. Nope - just a scrub operation.
The Ukraine was a region where “all children are ill” for a long time. Many many people are still forced to live in contaminated regions (no place else for them) and contend with raising their families in contaminated zones and all the medical problems that entails. The radioactive waste that sickened and killed 25 years ago is hard at work, sickening and killing today.
The reality doesn’t resemble your happy talk.
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Environmentalists like to present the former, but never the latter number. And since that thyroid cancer surge the best reported data shows NO further cancer of any kind above the expected baseline.
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Pathetic lies. Even the IAEA grudgingly admitted to 40thousand deaths and that number is low. The area is still heavily contaminated and people are still getting cancer and other illnesses today.
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Certainly not the large predicted spike, which should have been too large to cover up. There certainly was plenty radioactive cesium and strontium there, but Chernobyl makes me wonder if their toxicity is overstated. For the Japanese sake I hope that is so.
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No. Do some reading. And you leave out quality of life. What’s it like to be reared in an area known for it’s leukemia among children? What’s it like to be pregnant in that zone? Happy? Yeah I get to raise my whole family in a contaminated zone. It’s hell and it’s not overstated - there’s a real effort on the part of the nuke industry to act as if Chernobyl was over 25 years ago and Fukushima was over 3 years ago. No. They will be with us for many many years. Haven’t you read of wild mushrooms being imported from the Ukraine being flagged as far over the safety level for contamination? Wild boar is illegal game in those regions, too contaminated. It’s indecent to hear the destruction of quality of life portrayed as “not so bad afterall.”
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I still think it is reasonable try extracting what’s already semi-contained in that water and parking it someplace safer for a few hundred years. Just don’t let perfection there get in the way of doing “good enough.” Getting the spent fuel somewhere safer than the damaged pools and then dismantling the reactors and recovering their escaped cores is more important. Don’t let the reactions restart.
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The Japanese have other ideas. They are burning radioactive wastes and flushing contamination into the waterways - I believe it isn’t entirely accidental that they have erected flimsy short term tanks to hold contaminated waste long therm through typhoons. I believe these efforts are intended to transfer radioactive wastes off the island nation into other waterways and nations, leaving Japan cleaner and the rest of the world dirtier.