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Fukushima nuclear disaster: Japan to release treated water for next 30 years
Vanguard ^
| August 22, 2023
Posted on 08/22/2023 5:00:05 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Japan will start releasing treated radioactive water from the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, despite opposition from its neighbours.
The decision comes weeks after the UN’s nuclear watchdog approved the plan.
Some 1.34 million tonnes of water – enough to fill 500 Olympic-size pools – have accumulated since the 2011 tsunami destroyed the plant.
The water will be released over 30 years after being filtered and diluted.
Authorities will request for the plant’s operator to “promptly prepare” for the disposal to start on 24 August if weather and sea conditions are appropriate, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Tuesday after a Cabinet meeting.
Mr Kishida had visited the plant on Sunday, prompting speculation the release was imminent.
The government has said that releasing the water is a necessary step in the lengthy and costly process of decommissioning the plant, which sits on the country’s east coast, about 220km (137 miles) north-east of the capital Tokyo.
Japan has been collecting and storing the contaminated water in tanks for more than a decade, but space is running out.
Fukushima nuclear disaster In 2011, a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake flooded three reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
The event is regarded as the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Shortly after, authorities set up an exclusion zone which continued to be expanded as radiation leaked from the plant, forcing more than 150,000 people to evacuate from the area.
The plan to release water from the plant has caused alarm across Asia and the Pacific since it was approved by the Japanese government two years ago.
It was signed off by the UN’s nuclear watchdog in July, with authorities concluding the impact on people and the environment would be negligible.
But many people, including fishermen in the region, fear that discharging the treated water will affect their livelihoods.
A crowd of protesters in Tokyo on Tuesday also staged a rally outside the prime minister’s official residence, urging the government to stop the release.
Plant operators Tepco have been filtering the water to remove more than 60 radioactive substances but the water will not be entirely radiation-free as it will still contain tritium and carbon-14- radioactive isotopes of hydrogen and carbon that cannot be easily removed from water.
Experts speak
But experts have said they are not a danger unless consumed in large quantities, because they emit very low levels of radiation.
“As long as the discharge is carried out as planned, radiation doses to people will be vanishingly small – more than a thousand times less than doses we all get from natural radiation every year,” says Prof Jim Smith, who teaches environmental science at the University of Portsmouth.
Experts also note that the contaminated water is being released into a massive body of water, the Pacific Ocean.
“Anything released from the site will therefore be massively diluted,” says Prof Gerry Thomas, who teaches molecular pathology at the Imperial College London.
Tokyo has previously said the water that will be released into the Pacific Ocean, which has been mixed with seawater, has tritium and carbon 14 levels that meet safety standards.
Nuclear plants around the world regularly release waste water with tritium levels above that of the treated water from Fukushima.
But the plan has caused uproar in neighbouring countries, with China the most vocal opponent. It accused Japan of treating the ocean like its “private sewer.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin reiterated Beijing’s objection on Tuesday, adding it would take “necessary measures to safeguard the marine environment, food safety and public health”.
Japan is “putting its own self-interest over the long-term well-being of all humankind” with the release of waste water, Mr Wang said.
Hong Kong said it would “immediately activate” import curbs on some Japanese food products.
Both South Korea and China have already banned fish imports from around Fukushima.
South Korea’s government, however, has endorsed the plan, and has accused protesters of scaremongering. BBC
TOPICS: Business/Economy; Local News; Science
KEYWORDS: fukushima; radiation; radioactive; radioactivewater; treatedwater
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To: Craftmore
Especially Shin Godzilla.
21
posted on
08/23/2023 12:55:19 PM PDT
by
mewzilla
(We will never restore the republic if we don't first secure the ballot box.)
To: chuck allen
That’s bogus. I’m very familiar with GE’s Mark 1 nuclear steam supply system design.
The issue was what was essentially a pole building built on top of the containment building which houses the reactor.
The steel sided pole building blew up from a hydrogen build up that evolved from the zirconium cladding on the fuel rods when they’re not cooled by water.
The emergency generators ran fine until the diesel fuel in the 600 gal. day tanks was exhausted. The generators weren’t wiped out. They ran out of fuel.
For safety reasons you don’t store the main supply of 5,000 gal. next to the generator. You replenish the day tanks when it empties. W/o power you can’t do that.
W/o the generators running the pumps supplying cooling water to the spent fuel pool stop running. Then the spent fuel pool heats up, the rods are exposed and hydrogen evolves.
Even at TMI where hydrogen also escaped into the containment, neither the building nor the reactor blew up.
I saw the pictures when I worked there.
22
posted on
08/23/2023 1:19:54 PM PDT
by
meatloaf
To: ransomnote
That was what was essentially a pole building built over top of the spent fuel pool to shield it from the atmosphere.
Normally a negative pressure would be maintained in the building to prevent anything inside from escaping outside.
Hydrogen formed after the zirconium cladding on the spent fuel pool heated up when power to the cooling pumps stopped.
The containment and reactor inside remain intact.
I worked at plants with a GE Mark 1 design which is the same as Fukushima and the latest design which enclosed the spent fuel pool in a hardened building instead of a corrugated pole building.
23
posted on
08/23/2023 1:28:54 PM PDT
by
meatloaf
To: meatloaf
No. It was not just a pole building that blew up.
Nuclear fuel was blown into the environment and also escaped containment below ground according to TEPCO’s engineers who used remote controlled cameras to discover what was going on down there. I can’t believe ‘the narrative’ has covered over the truth to the point people are saying, “Don’t believe your own eyes. Don’t recall the public addresses where the lasted contamination reports were given to the public. It never happened.”
Isotopes indicating active or continuing reaction were detected in ground water. One piece of fuel rod was blown ‘too far’ to have made that transit under the force of conventional explosion. The ocean near the plant received a shower of radiation as well. The radioactive warning system meant to advise the public where to move based on downwind direction was not activated because, according to Tepco, “We didn’t want to,” so some people escaped from the immediate area to several miles farther from the plant, but unfortunately they escaped in the direction of the radioactive plume.
TEPCO held regular public meetings wherein they insisted that no uranium had been detected outside the plant but they kept providing other radioactive isotope information, like Cesium.
Finally a reported dared to ask the question. “Are you specifically testing for Uranium?” The answer was, no.
But you could detect all these by radioactive byproducts but the public was supposed to believe no uranium could possibly be present.
The Japanese government were against the public interest from the start. They shipped radioactive contaminated produce and beef all over Japan. Likely this was to prevent ‘cleaner areas’ have a better long term health outcome compared with regions directly around Fukushima.
No - it wasn’t just a pole building that blew up. There’s far too much proof that the containment was broken and the myth of nuclear power industry engineering perfection was blown sky high.
24
posted on
08/23/2023 2:10:12 PM PDT
by
ransomnote
(IN GOD WE TRUST)
To: ransomnote
Still spreading baseless hysteria. You work for CNN?
To: hopespringseternal
CNN supports everything you say - you and CNN are like twins reading from the same talking points. CNN says I’m spreading ‘baseless’ rumors, just like they say Trump is spreading ‘baseless rumors’.
26
posted on
08/23/2023 2:35:37 PM PDT
by
ransomnote
(IN GOD WE TRUST)
To: ransomnote; meatloaf; hopespringseternal
In the General/Chat forum, on a thread titled Fukushima nuclear disaster: Japan to release treated water for next 30 years, ransomnote wrote: |
Isotopes indicating active or continuing reaction were detected in ground water. One piece of fuel rod was blown ‘too far’ to have made that transit under the force of conventional explosion. |
Those are some bold claims, right there. But you leave a bit to the imagination.
"Isotopes indicating active or continuing reaction were detected in ground water."
Does this mean that you think that the fuel pellets you claim were "blown up" landed in the mud somewhere and were undergoing nuclear fission, without the benefit of a moderator? That would be quite a result all by itself. And what isotopes were those, anyway? Xenon, maybe? That one has a scary name. Or maybe something else that's only magically there when there's and "active or continuing" reaction. Come to think of it, it's kind of confusing: is there a difference between an "active" reaction and a "continuing" reaction?
But you've saved the really big news for later.
One piece of fuel rod was blown ‘too far’ to have made that transit under the force of conventional explosion.
So it must have been some sort of unconventional explosion, right? You're implying that there was a nuclear explosion, which would bag someone a Nobel prize, just for starters. Do the Iranians know about this? They could stop messing around trying to get 90% enrichment and just use plain old ~5% enriched fuel rods. Please don't tell them, they really can't be trusted.
Do you have any source for this stuff?
27
posted on
08/23/2023 3:37:55 PM PDT
by
absalom01
(You should do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, and you should never wish to do less.)
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