Friday, May 18, 2018

Diluting Tritium and Dumping in the Pacific Ocean



The solution to pollution for polluters is DILUTION, as you can see in the article below, which describes approvingly efforts to discharge tritiated water from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster into the Pacific Ocean:
William Steel ( 5/11/2018) Remediating Fukushima—“When everything goes to hell, you go back to basics” ArtsTechnica, https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/remediating-fukushima-when-everything-goes-to-hell-you-go-back-to-basics/
The ultimate plan for stored water is unknown; tritium has a half life of a dozen years, so physics won’t clean up the water for us. Some kind of controlled, monitored discharge—the likes of which is typical within the nuclear industry—is possible, according to Barrett. Indeed, the International Atomic Energy Agency has endorsed such a plan, which was proposed by the Atomic Energy Society of Japan in 2013. The plan involved diluting tritiated water with seawater before releasing it at the legal discharge concentration of 0.06MBq/L and monitoring to ensure that normal background tritium levels of 10Bq/L aren’t exceeded. 
Discussions at both national and international levels would need to come first. Part of the difficulty here harkens back to societal dynamics surrounding risk and contamination: “In nuclear there is no such thing as absolute zero—sensitivity goes down to the atom. This makes discussion about decontamination or levels of acceptable contamination difficult. There’s tritium in that water that’s traceable to the accident; it’s entirely safe, but for the time being, with the event still in recent memory, it’s not acceptable,” observed Barrett.
Barrett, who is cited above, is an advisor to the Japanese government and TEPCO and is a former US nuclear industry executive, according to the article. He thinks there are no risks from releasing tritium in large quantities for an indefinite time period as TEPCO struggles with the problem of contaminated water.

Everyday, between 200-1000 tons of radiation-contaminated water is produced at the Fukushima Daiichi site depending upon weather conditions.

Tritium does bioaccumulate. It is a beta emitter.

See my related posts for discussion of implications:

Majia's Blog: Tritium and Nuclear Power Plants: "Blowdown" Worsens ...

Majia's Blog: Tritium Contaminating Our Environment: A Letter ...

Majia's Blog: Down's Syndrome and Tritium in Arizona

Majia's Blog: Tritium in Us All

Majia's Blog: Hidden Tritium

Majia's Blog: Endless Tritium in Our Environment

Majia's Blog: Childhood Leukemia and Nuclear Plants: Is Tritium the ...

Majia's Blog: TEPCO Official Admits Plant is Out of Control




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