The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.
© Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Japan prepares for release of tritium from Fukushima plant
By YURI KAGEYAMA TOKYO©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
68 Comments
Login to comment
CH3CHO
This is what happens when we let nuclear industry to regulate itself.
She should do so first. But I think no one will be convinced even if she drinks the radioactive water.
Hiro S Nobumasa
Sure, I believe Tanaka 180%!
Tritium is safe so let's just use the stored tritium in water in car washes in Tokyo and as toilet water at Shinzo's house.
And save some for Rosa Yang and her family in California cuz they dig tritium flavored water!
Seriously, I hope Greenpeace should sue Tokyo for polluting earths Pacific Ocean.
GW
Like I said back in 2011 the water from the plants WILL make it to the ocean, only question is when & if man doesn't release it mother nature will find a way
CH3CHO
Boycott Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020.
cleo
Not just one Japanese official, but all those, Japanese and otherwise, including Ms. Yang and the usual suspects on JT, who keep telling us vociferously that nuclear power is 'perfectly safe'.
Not just one of the tanks, but all the tanks. Not just 'a drink', but use it as their sole source of water for drinking, cooking, washing, bathing...when it's all gone, and all these pro-nuclear 'experts' are still in glowing health, then maybe those of us who eat seafood might consider eating fish that have been harvested from tritium waters.
Maybe 'glowing health' wasn't quite the right phrase...
papigiulio
Or use all this water, bottle it up and hand it out to all the government officials meetings.
GW
That would empty those tanks in no time with all the meetings going on!
Laguna
Unfortunately, releasing it to the sea for dilution is probably best - vastly preferable to allowing it to leak into aquifiers. At the same time, an area off the coast of Tohoku must be declared off-limits to fisheries. There would be a silver lining here: just as wildlife has seen an astounding rebound in the areas around Chernobyl, so could a marine preserve around Tohoku contribute to the revitilization of the vastly over-fished waters surrounding Japan.
nandakandamanda
These hastily-built tanks are already rusting and leaking, so it is really now just a question of time and timing, as has been said above.
The only question left is where to allow it to flow, either to filter down into the aquifers, or into the sea, or both.
This is our legacy.
CH3CHO
LagunaAPR. 12, 2016 - 05:00PM JST
Do you remember the earthquake and tsunami debris from Tohoku reached California in just a couple of months? If you release the radioactive water into the Pacific, the entire Pacific Ocean as well as the Indian and the Atlantic Oceans will be contaminated.
Restricting fisheries on the coast of Tohoku is meaningless measures to create false sense of security.
Peter Nozawa Thurwachter
So.... 800x more tritium makes its way into the English Channel everyday thanks to La Hague nuclear reprocessing plant in Normandy France, but no one is making a stink about it.
http://.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-3877.html
Sorry it's only in Japanese.
But this reminds me of the BP oil spill that was reported as the end of the world in order to take down Obama, but no one talks about the on going oil leaks in Nigeria or tries to do anything about it.
Much like how terror attacks that happen in a western country are reported on for days, but it's hard to find reporting when they happen elsewhere.
Harry_Gatto
I wonder what the effect would be of taking this polluted water and dumping it in the Pacific at the farthest point from land, taking into account ocean currents, and allowing it to be diluted in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean? Or perhaps, filling an old tanker with the polluted water and sinking it into the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the ocean.
CH3CHO
nandakandamandaAPR. 12, 2016 - 05:14PM JST
Just build new tanks and transfer the contaminated water into them. TEPCO or the government can keep on renewing the tanks until the radiation diminishes to non-detectable.
Simple solution.
BertieWooster
Cleo,
It was perfect :)
nath
That's a bit of an exaggeration. It would take a ridiculous amount of radioactive water to pollute even a small part of either of these oceans. There is a lot of water in these oceans. I mean a lot of water. There is so much water that it's hard for us as humans just to grasp exactly how much water there is in the oceans. But suffice to say it's a lot.
Ghost rider
What mean here it is too expensive !!! This is the price Abe has to pay if he wants to play the nuclear game. Privatize the profit drop the loss and dirt to the public....
Jeremy Rigby
Nearly impossible to remove and it will cost a lot of money cannot be used as an excuse! They did it, they clean it!
katsu78
That's entirely too reasonable. You need to be posting things like, "Radiation?! Aw hell naw!" and "TEPCO LIED" followed by an excessive number of bangs.
TravelingSales
Get real people. 57ml - less than a sixth of a small can of beer!
luap
Radioactive tritium dumped in the Pacific. Who knows, a new kind of Godzilla will rise from the depths of the ocean! Or an action hero!
wnagler1
This is outrageous. How much longer can these incompetent criminals at Tepco be allowed to self regulate and manage the state of and decmmissioning process of Fukushima Da-Ichi? And where are the experts in Physics at Japanese institutions like Todai, and learning foreign resources including MIT, Caltech, UC Berkeley, Israel and global nuclear/ atomic orgaanizatiions and government agencies? Why are they not being consulted nor quoted when these are proposed? Why does supposedly "Green" Japan, sweep under the carpet things that will in some way contribute to global and national ecological cancers?****
FizzBit
I wonder if they've studied how phytoplankton reacts to tritium? Or just us precious humans?
Shimizu Randall
I favor leaving the water in the tanks. I don't see why the water cannot be re-used to cool the tanks. The old tanks should be repaired or replaced.
Tom Jason
let's see .... world summit on Global Warming and not a word on the continuing meltdown of 3 reactors dumping radiation 24/7 into our air and water. Let's make sure we hurt the coal industry but please don't form a coalition to stop the radiation leak. Don't forget people, to recycle and collect your old aluminum cans and make sure you plant a tree today !! ok ?? who cares we have Chernobyle burning for how many years now ? Do we test the air , food ?, milk ? , fish we eat? I don't know do we ? I have noticed more cancer centers popping up nation wide. Where is Greenpeace where is the UN ... we are worried about ISIS and North Korea but why no media on Japan Crisis ?? Oh I forgot ... don't want to hurt the ECONOMY ... got it.
Stu Pedasso
If that water is merely used for cooling the core then why can't it simply be reused for that purpose even though it has nuclear contaminants? Why keep pumping tons of fresh clean water in there to get it contaminated instead of just cooling it with the already contaminated stuff that must eventually be stored and cleaned up?
smithinjapan
Well, while I feel very sorry for the fisheries and related industries, if this happen I think we must all boycott, and convince other nations to as well, products along the Fukushima coastline as well as a number of other adjacent prefectures. No one has any right to object to such boycotts. Let TEPCO compensate the industries BEFORE dumping.
And to prove it's safe, not only should Japanese officials, but anyone who supports nuclear power, should have to drink such water, for at least a few years, as well as use it for daily life, and in their cooking in particular. THEN it might be believed that it's safe. Start with Abe and all the TEPCO execs, though, with a daily morning live broadcast of them drinking water proven to be from water around the plant.
Mike O'Brien
Tritium also rapidly leaves the soft tissues and organs of the human body. It has an effective half-life of 10 days.
Then why should she do it? But thanks for pointing out that nothing will reduce the irrational fear that some people have.
No problem. Ship me as much as you want, even though I have never said nuclear power is 'perfectly safe' and don't remember anyone else saying so either.
ALL water has tritium in it and it always has. So if you have ever in your whole life eaten fish then you have already eaten fish harvested from tritium water.
Brian Trosko
Tritium has a specific activity of 9.7E3 curies per gram. 3.4 petabecquerels is therefore about 9.5 grams of tritium. This is an utterly insignificant amount of tritium, even before you dilute it into the entire ocean.
Robert Frano
Re: "...Ridding water of tritium has been carried out in laboratories. But it’s an effort that would be extremely costly at the scale required for the Fukushima plant, which sits on the Pacific coast. Many scientists argue it isn’t worth it and say the risks of dumping the tritium-laced water into the sea are minimal...."
Tritium is used in REAL, (Vs. the Bush-Blair-Iraq-Imaginary...), N.-W.M.D.'s, as a megaton-yield-booster...
Sorry if it's getting REALLY, really expensive to maintain this mechanical_affront to humanity / vainly, attempt to control the dangers of N-elements...some of which stay, dangerous for time-periods, longer than humans have walked the earth, but... The Japanese government, 'N Tokyo Light, 'N Power took it upon themselves to place a multi-reactor N-power-plant where a Tsunami / Earthquake could destroy it, all the while endangering the rest of us, so... I have ZERO sympathy!
Black Sabbath
FYI, titrium has a half-life of just over 12 years, and a biological half-life in the human body of 7-12 days.
IOW, if released, it will be around for over a decade but it does not bio-accumulate.
Finally, it would be nice to know the concentration in the tanks.
Andrea Nash
What I find absolutely unacceptable after this whole fiasco, is they still want to put nuclear power plants around the world! We have no idea what we are doing, how to store radioactive waste so future generations have a clean , optimal planet. The lunatics are running the world.
Sandpanther
Turns out the effects of tritium on phytoplankton are well understood. Tritium is naturally occurring, so any phytoplankton living now has been exposed to tritium. Previous generations of phytoplankton were also exposed to tritium (going back farther than human history), so we have solid evidence of the effects over multiple generations as well.
More recently, above-ground nuclear testing releases more tritium than the levels under discussion here, so we have 80+ years' worth of data on the effects on marine life.
Mike O'Brien
Farmboy,
What I meant was EXACTLY what I wrote. Tritium has an effective half-life of 10 days. Effective half-life is the combined effect of radiological decay and biological removal.
Black Sabbath
We don't know that.
Utrack
That tritium laced water is perfect to use with cement to Entomb Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
WilliB
Good grief the nuclear hysteria crowd is out in force again. A quick google expedition will show you that the with its weak radiation and short half-life of 12 years, there is no issue at all.
And by the way, here is from Wiki:
"Tritium occurs naturally due to cosmic rays interacting with atmospheric gases. () Worldwide, the production of tritium from natural sources is 148,000 terabecquerels per year. The global equilibrium inventory of tritium created by natural sources remains approximately constant at 2,590,000 terabecquerels. "
So, no screaming missives against cosmic rays yet? We are doomed!
sakokujin
For all of the people sounding off, what do you suggest they do? And if your reaction is "Well, just store it!" then the question becomes where, for how long, until what standard is reached, etc. There is little or no public consensus on these issues, and without a consensus there are not likely to be solutions. What happens if they do release the tritium? What does that do to the environment? Is tritium naturally present in all water (yes, it is). How much will releasing it cause that to rise, locally and in the world-wide water supply? Is the change even measurable 1 km away out to sea? I don't know these answers, and without them I have NO opinion.
Ryder
The silly fear mongering is sad. Tritium is only dangerous when it's loaded into a hydrogen bomb. It's used for watch dials and gun sights and is hardly dangerous. 57 millimeters in the ocean will never be noticed.
Utrack
So in 25 years all of this will be 3He which is helium... But in the mean time I find nothing to laugh about because that same situation can occur in 4 or 5 years if the ice wall scheme is just a scheme... The only viable albeit politically unacceptable solution is to entomb Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant....
katsu78
Uh, two things: First of all, every glass will not have that same small effect because the ocean is a teenie bit larger than the man-made tanks TEPCO is storing the water in now, so the tritium will become vastly less concentrated. To an order of magnitude most people don't even comprehend. When a homeopathy salesman promises that diluting the active ingredient to miniscule quantities provides the same small effect throughout the container, sensible people rightly proclaim them to be a fraud. Do you think making the active ingredient radioactive magically changes the rules?
Second, uh, I don't know about you, but most people don't drink glasses of sea water.
Donnie Palahnuk
This is the largest release ever. It will be measurable world wide, as it will increase the global amount of tritium about 20% (rough estimate) in ocean water (just a guess). Holding up the beaker was political spin to say ... looks so little. But it is significant. The atmosphere produces 5.0 to 7.0 x 10^16 Bq, annually. This is 50-70 peta Bq. The plant will release 3.4 pete Bq. This is roughly 10% of annual atmospheric production. It will be measurable since it will be in the ocean. Since, the tritium in the atmosphere moves downwards into the ocean ... this will be a large spike in the oceans, as atmospherically produced tritium decays on the way down. I guess from a human exposure standpoint, it is a low risk proposal, but the effect on the marine ecosystems, is not so easy to predict. This is a sad situation ... no matter how you look at it.
Sparky McBiff
When it comes to the Fukushima fiasco, Tritium is the very least of the worries.
Tritium has a half-life of about 12.5 years and is essentially negligent when it comes to the reality of what is being spewed out into the Pacific.
Disillusioned
"It's all under control!"
Alex Roncelli
Take it to a launch pad over the ocean, AND LAUNCH IT TOWARDS THE SUN. Along with all other nuclear waste.
Discot Harvey
Dilution is the solution to pollution. :)
Citizen2012
While Japanese govt , major share holder at TEPCO, states It is so safe and no harmful that it must be released in the pacific ocean at all cost.
Utrack
The thyroid testing of Children in Kashiwa City Chiba has shown and increase in cases of Thyroid Abnormality. I am show this Tritium waste water being poured into the ocean will increase these numbers.
http://www.city.kashiwa.lg.jp/houshasenkanren/3327/3330/p034081.html
English Translation
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.city.kashiwa.lg.jp%2Fhoushasenkanren%2F3327%2F3330%2Fp034081.html
Melissa Shimosato
Here is a leak of which there were any at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant that was Reported by TEPCO.
TEPCO announced in a press release that 2,029,900,000 Bq of Cs-134/137 leaked as contaminated water in Fukushima plant.
According to Tepco, a leakage detector of waste incineration building went off around noon of 3/23/2016.
Tepco reports the leaked volume was 5.3 t. The leaked contaminated water was from the cesium absorption facility to contain extremely high density of Cs-134/137.
From Tepco’s announcement, Cs-134/137 density was 383,000,000 Bq/m3.
All β nuclides to include Sr-90 was 480,000,000 Bq/m3.
At the moment of the press release, Tepco had not completed removing the leaked water but they state the building is designed to retain contaminated water inside.
The pipe from the cesium absorption facility was cut off due to a construction however somebody turned on the facility to cause the large leakage.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/2016/1270693_7738.html
http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/2016/1270654_7738.html
WilliB
Katsu:
It would be interesting to hear what the antinuclear hysteria crowd hwew thinks about homeopathy. It seem they all believe in it. Because claiming that the realising these 57 ccm of tritium into the ocean would have any effect whatsoever practically assumed homeopathy.
Tony W.
I have read that tritium would make a much safer nuclear fuel than uranium just because of the greatly reduced radiation risk, and it's more common than uranium. Maybe it's not unsafe to release it into the sea on a one-off basis. And if it is safe fissionable material, why aren't they using it in reactors?
WilliB
Tony W:
Tritium as a replacement for uranium makes no sense at all. That is a completely bizarre idea. Do you perhaps mean Thorium? That is a completely different element.
CH3CHO
WilliBAPR. 13, 2016 - 01:20PM JST
Homeopathy has nothing to do with tritium release planned by TEPCO.
The fallacy of homeopathy is that taking diluted poison enhances health. I remember nuclear industry once advertised that exposure to radiation makes people healthier, just as homeopathy salesmen advertises their wrong idea.
WilliB
Acetaldehyde:
Nope, the fallacy of homeopathy is is believing that a substance diluted to an astronomical degree (to zero, in fact) has any effect at all. And that is the same irrational belief that the tritium fear mongers are trying to spread.
Mike O'Brien
Actually using it to make cement is a great idea. Tritium only gives off very low energy radiation, the outer layer of skin will completely stop it. So it is only a concern (and a very very minor one) if taken into the body. If used in cement the radiation wouldn't be able to harm anyone and the cement would last for long enough for the tritium to have all decayed away.
But entombing the plants is, on the other hand, a foolish idea.
First of all, the increase in cases is because of all the testing. The same increase was noted in South Korea long before Fukushima when they started testing everyone. And testing of children in Japan far away from Fukushima also show the same effect. Autopsies have shown that just about EVERYONE has some abnormal cells/cysts in their thyroid and in almost all cases these cells/cysts never cause any harm.
Here is one of many articles that explain what is happening and why it ISN'T related to radiation or Fukushima.
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/confusing-overdiagnosis-for-an-epidemic-of-thyroid-cancer-in-japan-after-fukushima/
Second of all, radiation induced thyroid cancer is almost exclusively caused by iodine-131 NOT tritium.
Because it isn't fissionable. It is used as fuel in FUSION reactors. And at present there are no man-made fusion reactors that produce more power than they use.
But the analogy that WilliB mentioned DOES have something to do with the tritium release.
I highly doubt that the nuclear industry ever advertised any such thing.
But studies of low level radiation exposure have shown a possible beneficial effect.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/
Gordon Barrett
I find it impossible to believe they are building 300 cubic feet of storage per day. They are releasing alot, the numbers do not add up.
Charles Noguhi
If it is so safe and weak, why is tritium a substance which is used to make thermonuclear weapons?
As it a byproduct from nuclear power generation, what has become of the tritium from 30 to 50 years of nuclear power generation?
Citizen2012
Tritium is as radioactive as other beta radioactive particle, if ingested via food or water or absorbed through the skin, it could attack your internal tissue and damage your DNA.
WilliB
Charles nogui:
Gone, turned to Helium. Half-life of 12 years, remember?
Mike O'Brien
Steel and wires are used to make thermonuclear weapons too. Should we be afraid of steel and wires?
Tritium is used in weapons in conjunction with deuterium (which is a NON-radioactive isotope of hydrogen). The initial nuclear fission blast of plutonium creates high enough temperatures and pressures to cause the tritium and deuterium to undergo fusion releasing a little more energy and lots more neutrons, those neutrons ensure that more of the plutonium undergoes fission. Without the tritium-deuterium 'boost' some of the plutonium wouldn't fission. So the tritium increases the yield without increasing the amount of plutonium needed. It also reduces the size for a given yield and allows for adjusting the yield during arming.
So unless the tritium encounters massive temperatures and pressures (like inside the sun) it isn't a weapons hazard and is safe and weak.
All of this info can easily be found on the internet for anyone who is actually interested in facts and not just wanting to spread fear.
wnagler1
At some point, regarding Fukushima, Japan will not be able to keep sweeping the truth, and the actual risks "Under the Carpet." Time for Japan to face reality, get the right assistance & resources, and dissolve Tepco.
WilliB
wnagler1:
Why don´t you tell us the "truth" and "actual risks" you are referring to? What exactly do you claim is "swept under the carpet"?
NukeEngineer
I have over 30 years in the US commercial nuclear industry. Tritium is a normal byproduct of all reactors and has no measurable impact on living organisms. The beta decay (a fast electron) has so little energy it cannot penetrate skin. The byproduct is helium, completely inert. The amount t be released by Fukushima will have no effect on people or marine life.
People who are anti-nuclear use any mention of radioactivity to instill fear in the uninformed masses. It has been five years since a disastrous natural phenomenon wrecked three reactors at Fukushima. There is no mention that nobody has died or gotten sick from the effects of radiation due to the event. Look at facts, not fear mongers.
cleo
Perhaps we should look at the facts regarding the thousands of livestock and pet animals that died of starvation after being abandoned in the no-go zone, or were culled.
Or we could look at the financial loss to the farmers who lost their farms and cattle.
Or the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their homes and will never be able to return.
The businesses and livelihoods that were lost.
The towns and communities that were evacuated and will never be restored.
But nobody actually died from radiation, so it's all OK?
Tim Elder
Most of the commenters subscribe to the LNT (Linear No Threshold) theory which has been disproven many times. I saw no mention in the article about the half-life of tritium, and only a few in the comments. And nothing about the radiation level compared to the background radiation we get all the time--even more if you fly or live at high altitudes. Yes, small amounts of radiation appear to be GOOD for living tissue. I suggest all of the water be dumped; but to reduce the impact on the LNT people, dump it gradually and away from any drinking water intakes. (Gradually means the cooling water for the day, plus one tank.)