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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.