At Fukushima plant, a million-ton headache: radioactive water

@kurisupisu

I noticed you haven't complained about nobody else backing theirs either...

But here you go.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/09/04/why-renewables-cant-save-the-climate/#6c6c1c153526

http://www.tedxdanubia.com/videos/why-renewables-can-t-save-the-planet-michael-shellenberger-tedxdanubia

https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/02/why-renewable-energy-wont-save-us-from-climate-cha.aspx

https://futurism.com/renewable-energy-is-great-but-it-cant-save-our-biosphere

@Dom Palmer

You haven’t backed up your opinion with any facts...

Might cost a lot at the beginning

Might lead to lots of death because they can't currently support a modern society and a massive reduction in the global economy.

So long term, cheaper, cleaner and much safer.

Not cheaper, not cleaner (except maybe hydro and geothermal but they can't supply enough) and not safer.

For god's sake, just switch to renewables. Might cost a lot at the beginning but'll pay for itself very quickly. So long term, cheaper, cleaner and much safer. No brainer.

Why don´t you accept correct news. What I mean is that as much correct news you do know the better decision you will take. As more objectiv views of a matter the better the result will be even if it not is in coordination with your initial thought.

Of cource nuclear power have it´s problem but don´t base the decision good or not good on fake news.

let me ask you this: if the water evaporates, are the elements left behind

Tritium, being water just with a different isotope of hydrogen, would evaporate along with the rest of the water. Other dissolved impurities would (mostly) remain behind.

Mix the water with concrete to produce slabs for sea walls.

good idea,

let me ask you this: if the water evaporates, are the elements left behind, or if, for ex. reverse osmosis is applied can the elements be removed?

The water needs a better marketing and branding campaign. They could bottle it and sell it as a supplement. A supplement to your daily dose of radioactivity, following the proven marketing technique (a myth, but who cares?) - if a little is good for you, a lot of it must be better for you.

You need a little tritium in your diet to help digestion, or maybe the idea that this tritium water is a perfect cleansing water to remove makeup and make your skin younger and fresh!

Yeah, that'll sell.

Maybe the Kardashians can promote it and it will become a huge financial success instead of a money pit?

Antidote, neutralizer, must be something out there to make the water less deadly.

The water in the tanks settles into two layers. the bottom heavy layer with the contamination and the lighter top layer which is technical pure water and safe to drink.

No, it doesn't. Just the heating by the sun each day followed by cooling at night is enough to keep the water mixed. Also tritium, being water itself, will be well mixed throughout the tank even if left to sit for centuries.

I tried to copy a fact sheet re nuclear power.

The radiation from Fukushima to the Atmospheric is 10 - 30 PBq petaBequarel and direct 3 - 30 pBq.

In the ocean there are Uranium with a radiation of 37 000 PBq Thirtyseven tausend PBq and Potassium--40 with a radiation of 15 000 000 PBq that is 15 million PBq. That is the wast water have very low impact mixed by Uranium and Potassium.

Look at the situation in a sensible wiew. Everything alive do exhaust radiativety and a group of four persons do represent a radiation equal to the exhaust of Three Mile Island. The City center of Tokyo do have high level of radiation as effect of crowded streets.

Prior they scared common people with explosion in the car engine, the police etc and were also going with a red flag in front of the cars. Today they have fake news about the radiactive exhaust from nuclear.

Instead of attacking the civil nuclear power do turn you towards the military use of nuclear weapon. One percent reduction of military weapon have more effect than to close down all nuclear power plants.

@The Longtermer,

You'd firstly need four very big oil tankers that don't mind being contaminated, then the logistics to transport a billion litres of bad news into the middle of nowhere. Hopefully you could do that without incident.

I'm not sure Japan wants the additional stigma of polluting vast areas of land as well as sea.

And stop panicking! You have much more important things to worry about!

I'm perfectly calm, dude. Calmer than you are.

wow this is a serious problem without any solution. Seems some uniquely made in Japan solution would of surfaced by now, with all they hype about that. I guess they could source huge tankers and ship it somewhere else, like some country backwater uninhabitable territory and let it evaporate there. Who knows.

Unbelievable.

Dilution is the solution.... The Pacific is just the place....slowly release the essentially harmless water back to the sea. And stop panicking! You have much more important things to worry about!

Tritium can be removed from water. However, it is quite expensive

Perhaps the whalers can be persuaded to pony up some of that $50 million a year we give them? Japanese consumers may be comfortable with mercury in their whales, Tritium might be harder for them to stomach.

I remember few years ago my boss told me. "I don't trust Tokyo water"

The same I don't trust TEPCO or government.

Nowadays I don't eat any raw or cooked fish. Even if they tell me from Hokkaido I don't touch. I also don't eat any meat/veg/rice from Fukushima or Tohoku.

And I always give same advice to gaikokujins.

The water in those tanks in the photograph above cannot be too bad, judging by the fact that they are not wearing full protection suits.

I say filter once more, dilute, and disperse to the ocean. The local fishermen are aware of the currents and do not have to fish locally, if they can be trusted to be responsible...

It is obviously not highly radioactive, and metal adds a barriers. However, would you drink it? Of course not.

The question is whether the rest of the world should have to deal with Japan's atomic pollution. The fact that it is expensive to maintain these tanks is not the ROW's problem.

WilliBToday 01:10 pm JST

A lot of posters here seem unfamiliar with the concept of dilution. While a million tons sounds impressive, when dumped into the ocean it is literally nothing.

I think it's more about the easy way out, the lack on consequences. It's so convenient to dump stuff into the sea.

Who is the party delaying this news, the party must know, U could have killed alot of people in a very slow way.

One can't help but note that if they hadn't insisted, and still insist, on nuclear power, there wouldn't be this headache. It's going to happen again, and next time it may well be instantly far worse than Chernobyl instead of slowly getting to that level.

WilliB: "A lot of posters here seem unfamiliar with the concept of dilution."

No, you are unfamiliar with the concept of radioactive elements and how people would like to avoid them in their food, the ocean in general, and in their water. If they dump it, Japanese seafood products on the entire east coast should be shunned.

A lot of posters here seem unfamiliar with the concept of dilution. While a million tons sounds impressive, when dumped into the ocean it is literally nothing.

When this nuclear disaster occurred, everyone thought the government would rethink its nuclear-power policy right then and there and look for alternative energy. But it didn’t. Not only that, Abe played the role of a salesman when visiting foreign countries, trying hard to sell Hitachi-made nuclear-power plants.

Strangely enough, in hindsight, right after the accident, U.S. government officials and so-called japanophiles came to Japan in hordes, who urged the Japanese government not to abandon its long-cherished nuclear-power policy. Was the U.S. military-industrial complex behind the scenes, deeply involved in Japan’s nuclear-power policy from the very beginning? And so they encouraged the powers that be to stand firm on this?

Zichi, I agree. There really isn't much other choice. Soon, those tanks will deteriorate and the water dispelled in th nearby environment. Best to dump it mid-Pacific.

Million-ton headache tank of water contaminated with radioactive elements which grows by around 150 tons a day to include Tritium, is "cool and sexy" to put it by new appointed Minister of Environment. No reason to be worried, right? Traditional methods of Tritium removal involved “heavy water,” where Tritium is found in larger quantities, for the purpose of recycling the water back into nuclear reactors not into the Pacific Ocean. However, when Tritium is present in smaller concentrations, there is technological methods unfortunately it is prohibitively expensive. Perhaps I should appointed Minister of Environment, for one pollution is not cool nor sexy. Ask anyone who eats fish, which is pretty much a high number of folks around the world. The fish just don't stay in one area either.

The water in those tanks in the photograph above cannot be too bad, judging by the fact that they are not wearing full protection suits.

I say filter once more, dilute, and disperse to the ocean. The local fishermen are aware of the currents and do not have to fish locally, if they can be trusted to be responsible...

Meanwhile, the judiciary in Japan rule that ancient nuclear power stations can continue, in the face of mass opposition from its citizens!

Never mind, the Olympics are coming....

voiceofokinawaToday 07:18 am JST

What a tragedy! You can't keep installing tank after tank there to contain endlessly flowing radioactive water. It’s like a goose trying to stop the flow of a river by drinking it.

Why ? What's the issue, the whole area is closed no ? They can keep adding tanks around. Keep your water, deal with your mistakes.

Edit: Will not have any impact on the environment.

This article is full of untruths and attempts to paint a picture of rosiness and pity. The truth is, TEPCO and the J-Gov have had ample time and gave ample funds to properly treat this water and to find an alternative to dumping it into the sea. They admit the water contains stronium, but expect us to believe they will remove it. They then go on to state that dumping a million tons of radioactive water into the sea will impact on the environment. I don’t know who are the bigger fools. Those who believe it or those who expect us to believe it.

And yet, countries are cool with purchasing food from this region? Well, to each his own.

Not only that Japan will bring countries that refuse food from Fukushima to WTO.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-southkorea-wto/south-korea-wto-appeal-succeeds-in-japanese-fukushima-food-dispute-idUSKCN1RN24X

And yet, countries are cool with purchasing food from this region? Well, to each his own.

And Abe said he is going to open up more reactors!

*Tritium can be removed from water. However, it is quite expensive and because these wombats have been sitting on their hands for 8 years the cost of removing the tritium from a million tons of water is extensive*

They already avoiding to build measures to deal with potential Tsunami just to cut the cost in the past. Are they willing to spend more money for this water cleaning technology? Really?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/fukushima-disaster-avoided-nuclear-plant

@Disillusioned

Yes agree with you, given the options available to decontaminate water. But, I think money is the roadblock and IMHO, it will take global threats to stop buying Japanese products to get Japan to commit to properly decontaminate the water.

But there is one that remains, which cannot be removed with the current technology: tritium.

This is an untruth! Tritium can be removed from water. However, it is quite expensive and because these wombats have been sitting on their hands for 8 years the cost of removing the tritium from a million tons of water is extensive, but it's cheaper for these environmental terrorists to tell lies and dump it all into the ocean.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/06/28/national/science-health/radioactive-tritium-removed-water-kindai-university-team-raising-hopes-fukushima-cleanup/#.XZpqw-czZTY

To become a minister at such a young age, this is the price paid by the young minister Koizumi, a massive headache.

Personally, I think given Japan's resumption of whaling and other internationally less acceptable practices, it's not out of the question that Japan will decontaminate the water and discharge it to sea.

Trust me, if they release that water into the Pacific Ocean, it won't just be Fukushima fishermen and farmers who will be affected, but everyone up and done the coast. The EU and other countries will slap a ban on the products so fast TEPCO's heads will spin. And then the Abe government will force the locals to buy and eat whatever is caught all to "support Tohoku".

What a tragedy! You can't keep installing tank after tank there to contain endlessly flowing radioactive water. It’s like a goose trying to stop the flow of a river by drinking it.

No decisions are likely in the near-term, with the country sensitive to the international spotlight that will fall on Japan as it hosts the Olympic Games next year.

At least there is a guarantee up until Olympic, no guarantee after that.

The government is sensitive to fears that people inside Japan and further afield will view any discharge as sending radioactive waste into the sea.

Fears? How about the effect? With this fact they still push people to buy and eat Fukushima food both inside and outside Japan.

Minister of the Environment Shinjiro Koizumi should work diligently on a solution that is "cool" and "sexy".