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Suga vows swift decision on release of Fukushima radioactive water
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kurisupisu
Isn’t it a foregone conclusion-the release of yet more radioactivity into the sea around Fukushima?
gogogo
Why is this news, everyone knows they will just dump it in the ocean without care :(
dagon
Suga promises to make a swift decision on this crucial matter looming since 2011, just wait for it...
James
Lets hope it is a NO or I won't be able to eat sushi
voiceofokinawa
Storing contaminated radioactive groundwater in tanks is like a goose trying to drain a river by drinking up the water. It’s been apparent that, sooner or later, efforts to contain the contaminated groundwater by installing a tank after a tank would come across a grave problem, which we are witnessing now.
Aly Rustom
Swift decision means swift release into the ocean before anyone can voice objections or concerns and just throw up your hands and say shoganai.
Dan Lavender
To think that storing it in huge tanks would be the long term solution to the problem is the question we should be asking.
I am sure that if the same amount of money and effort that was spent on hosting the Olympics in Tokyo was given to this more urgent issue we wouldn't be in this predicament now.
It's a sad state of affairs to be in really!
vanityofvanities
Pay compensation money to fishermen who are afraid of negative rumors. Release the tritium included water to ocean. It is the only way to solve the issue. The water will be released after neutralized to safety levels. Tritium is not harmful to humans. Tritium decays in 12 years. They cannot increase water tanks in Fukushima forever.
Kuruki
I will also make the swift decision to stay clear from Japanese seafood for the next decade.
dbsaiya
And how much trust should we put in the LDP and TEPCO? They started all this. I'm not a physicist and I think most people would be amenable to seeing a third party report by the IAEA, NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), and UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists). Why the U.S. NRC? Because the two major currents off eastern Japan, the Kuroshio and Oyashio flow east back to the U.S. west coast. Remember all the tsunami debris washing up on west coast shores and in Hawaii? This doesn't just impact the local fishermen, a nuke disaster affects the world, and Suga had better treat it in that manner. Again, I'm not a physicist and I would like to read or hear something coming from other than the LDP or TEPCO.
ReasonandWisdomNippon
It happened close to 10 years ago. I support this decision!
They have built thousands of containers and are running out of space and containers.
Japan is an Island Nation with limited space, I don't see any other country offering to take it the contaminated water, all you do is complain.
Does it count other countries have done the same?
Does it count its being filtered better then any other country could do? Japan is using it's most advanced technologies.
drlucifer
Provide evidence or links that it is filtered better and the technology is advanced and proven.
Kiwikid
Ten years of inaction is something you support?
100s and what's your point.
Do you understand how much shipping costs?
The major difference being that countries which are currently releasing radioactive water into the sea are allowing independent bodies to check this. The Japanese agencies involved have banned media and foreign bodies from investigating.
Two quotes for you.
and
Derek Grebe
Suga vows swift decision on release of Fukushima radioactive water
Translation: Suga vows to announce the decision to release the water into the ocean which was made years ago, but which Abe was too afraid of Fishing Lobby pushback to carry out.
This is going in the sea. So let us have no more of the "Japanese seafood is healthy" recitals. You poison your food source, it stops being healthy.
Ascissor
He's just waiting for the ringi-sho to circulate round.
kyushubill
Swift of course means after 20 meetings, 20 dinners at Nobu, 20 nomikai, and then the decision that will be announced after the water has been released. Japanese are the masters at Kabuki, and you know how all of them end.
Peter Neil
The water is not radioactive. It is contaminated with radioactive particles.
egads man!
Should be a bit quicker with the planned abolishing of hankos.
Though a swift decision would be done in less than a day.
noriahojanen
Both IAEA and NRC have recommended the water discharge plan.
IAEA supports discharge of Fukushima Daiichi water 03 April 2020
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/IAEA-supports-discharge-of-Fukushima-Daiichi-water
Fukushima Radioactive Water Should Be Released Into the Sea, Experts Tell Japanese Government
https://www.newsweek.com/fukushima-radioactive-water-released-sea-experts-japanese-government-1485051
Quote:
dbsaiya
Just FYI. Tritium does not decay in 12 years, the half life is 12 years. Suga is already under fire for rejecting scientists to the science advisory panel who are critical of the government. Environmental minister Koizumi has been mum about this lately even though the Nuclear Regulation Authority is under his purview. The NRA was formed and restructured from the corrupt Nuclear Safety Commission after the Fukushima disaster. The initial NRA had very strict regulations on restarts and oversight during the Democratic party's Kan and Noda administrations but when Abe took power around 2012, the agency did a quick turnaround and became very lax in restarts and oversight. A lot of this was news at the time, but has fallen by the wayside now. Japan can't be trusted, it needs a third party report to legitimize any actions it takes on waste disposal. Abe prioritized the olympics over the Fukushima cleanup, that in itself should be self-explanatory.
noriahojanen
Terribly hypocrite and politically motivated. Their home and coastal nuclear power plants also regularly discharge much larger amount of spent water into seas nearby. Suspend the operations of those reactors if they are to stay consistent.
Kiwikid
You realise we can read right?
direct quotes from the article you posted.
"the IAEA said the two options for controlled disposal outlined by the advisory subcommittee - vapour release and discharges to the sea - were both technically feasible."
"Reiterating advice from an IAEA decommissioning review mission to the plant in 2018, the experts said a decision on the disposition path for the stored treated water - after further treatment as needed - should be taken urgently"
All the article you posted said was releasing the water was an option, once filtered as needed. TEPCO has said they haven't filtered the water to the standard needed.
Aly Rustom
exactly
Well said!
By the way, al jazeera did a program on that where all the LDP propaganda gets debunked thoroughly and the LDP spokesman Tanigaki was made to look like a FOOL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbWY5FBe93w
noriahojanen
It's the most viable option, and this is exactly how almost all other active nuclear reactors do in the normal operations.
The water release is scheduled to get start at earliest in 2022. TEPCO has sufficient time to get prepared to meet technical requirements.
Flute
Considering the half life of tritium is 12 years should not it be safer to just increase storage space and start releasing in 2035 at the rate of 1 year stock by year. That should drop the level of active tritium in the water significantly and still be a reasonable amount of time for management as it would fall on the responsability of the same generation.
Could also be paired with evaporation by building a big pool were the older water will be put to evaporate, thought I do not know how that could affect the timing for releasing pool water.
Obviously than is after the contaminated water is filtered again to remove what should not be in it after the first filtering which happened to be faulty.
And if we are lucky by that time significant progress would be made so that we will be able to stop the disaster still in play thus the production of contaminated water. We already had some issue with involuntary release should not top it up with voluntary ones (water a few years ago, soil last year for the one I remember).
bo
So the experts have had their say, God help us talk about the blind leading the blind
smithinjapan
You have to love when someone vows to make a "swift decision", instead of, you know, making a swift decision (that has been in the works since 2011).
In any case, we all know they're going to dump it. When they do, I hope the usual posters and Japanese don't complain and blame the rest of the world when the world rightfully bans Japanese products, and I hope ALL nations do. The ocean is not Japan's personal trash can, and if they treat it as such, the world has the right to treat Japan like trash.
indigo
did Suga drink the water? we need the Oishi validity!
hooktrunk2
As long as the news media uses the words 'radioactive water' people will be freaked out. The article mentions how the water was treated only at the very end with tritium being the only element left. Tritium has a half life of 12.5 years, but the article doesn't help determine how long or how much tritium is left to be dangerous and when diluted with the billions of gallons of water in the ocean is it still dangerous? Without facts like these, articles like this seem to just trigger peoples fears. I wish news articles could instead help ease our fears.
Flute
@ Mark
Welcome to the world of 2 : Suga and not Suga. You are Suga or you are "foreign" experts opinions which is a sole "someone" but also "they". Not Suga seems to suffer from schizophrenia, isn't it.
Seriously what do people in charge of managing a pandemic are to do with the ones in charge of managing a nuclear disaster in process ? Sure some could be part of the 2 teams as the communication or geopolitics experts but several of them are not. So you seems to get your things kind of mixed up.
Aly Rustom
smithinjapan
Well said
i@n
So why can't or shouldn't Japan do it like other countries do?
Goodlucktoyou
International sanction could help our new dear leader decide.
25% tariffs on cars would be a good start.
Boycott of Olympics.
WilliB
Does not look like there is a technofix for the situation. He will have to release some into the ocean. Which would not be a big deal, if the sensationalist media were not blowing it out of proportion.
sf2k
I don't think it means what they think it means
Udondashi
It was a political decision that it should have been done a long time ago by the Abe administration. Every day thousands of tons of tritium are dumped into the sea by nuclear power plants around the world, no one complains. People sometimes forget that a CT scan or an X-RAY it radiates as much radiation as living beside to the fukushima plant.
Yes, radiation is dangerous to health but hysteria about nuclear Power Plants should not be used for political purposes because Japanese Nuclear Power Plants has the world-wide safety standards guaranteed by the IAEA.
Dan Lavender
@Udondashi.
You are incorrect.
Hideomi Kuze
Contaminated water contains also radioactivity except Tritium, part of them are beyond safety standard.
But Japanese government call contaminated water as "Tritium water" "treated water" "water containing Tritium" to make radioactive contamination looks small, also obedient major media of Japan are calling contaminated water so.
Japanese government emphasizes safety of "treated water" but they never move it from Fukushima.
because nobody believe in its safety.
AviBajaj
Evaporate all the water make 500000 tons os pure radio active waste n send it with love to China for creating Corona Pandemic no one nation in the world will utter a word
WilliB
AviBajaj
Err... you do realize that that would evaporate the Tritium too, or is that news to you?
Richard Gallagher
Suga. LDP. Tepco. Should use it as their own personal source of drinking water.
AviBajaj
WilliB comeon dont b a donkey only liquid evaporates if the solid evaporated it wont bcom pure radio active waste
albaleo
You might want to check what tritium is.
https://ask.metafilter.com/227591/Can-you-safely-evaporate-radioactive-water
quercetum
The Japanese are described as a people with a series of “but also’s.” They are slow, taking almost a decade to make a decision but also swift, flipping a switch and just dump contaminated water into the ocean. They are extremely polite but also very rude. They dislike change but also adapt to innovation. They are brave but also cowards hiding people’s erasers and shoes. They are serious but also flippant. It’s Japan.
albaleo
@Farmboy, do you have any recent information about this? I know strontium-90 and iodine-129 were found in a lot of the water following initial treatment. That was about 2 years ago. But I understood that there was to be a secondary treatment intended to reduce the amount to acceptable levels before discharging into the sea. I'm assuming (perhaps naively) that the water to be discharged will meet acceptable standards. But it would be nice to have accurate data on the current situation.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2258055-should-japan-dump-radioactive-water-from-fukushima-into-the-ocean/
englisc aspyrgend
Given there is so much international concern over the proposed plan then competent, independent, international verification of the levels of other nuclear contaminants is the only way of allaying that concern.
If and only if the water is adequately filtered then sea disposal is the best solution. But that is it self dependant on how diluted it is and on a very wide dispersion. Given all that then the impact on the existing background radiation of the Pacific will be negligible to non existent. Dumping it just off shore will be an environmental and reputational disaster.