
Radioactive water at Fukushima Daiichi: What should be done? (2018) - ericdanielski
https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-1-radioactive-water-at-fukushima-daiichi-what-should-be-done/
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opwieurposiu
Anyone who lives in Colorado receives a dose of many Fukushima's a year. I
have a radon counter in my basement and watch the count ebb and flow with the
seasons.

One self luminous exit sign contains about 0.00074 PBq of tritium. The
Fukushima stored water contains about 0.76 PBq of tritium, enough for about
1027 signs. I suspect there is far more tritium in the exit signs in Tokyo
then there is in the Fukushima water.

[https://www.everglow.us/pdf/tritium-exit-sign-fact-sheet-
lan...](https://www.everglow.us/pdf/tritium-exit-sign-fact-sheet-lanl.pdf)

~~~
throwaway5752
Tritium undergoes beta decay and has a 12 year half life. Beta decay from a
sign or your watch can only partially get through your skin (and skin is
continuously shed and contains melanin). If you drink (or eat plants/animals
in a tritium contaminated foodchain) then you bypass that protective layer and
can damage organs that have far less resilience to radiation exposure.

~~~
Animats
Right. So put it in an oil tanker, take it someplace with permafrost, pump it
out, and let it freeze. A few parts of Hokkaido are cold enough. In a century,
it will have decayed enough to be a non-problem.

~~~
throwaway5752
I don't think I'd want to bank on stable permafrost for a century. And one
would probably want to put some care into site selection and construction as
seismic hazards got us here to begin with. The residents of Hokkaido might
reasonably not be warmly welcoming to this idea. I don't know enough about
tritium impact to sublimation rates, but that would presumably be a problem.
But point is taken about enclosed and chilled storage for 84-96 years.

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fredley
My old Physics teacher always said to put it on cornflakes. The surface area
of all cornflakes in existence (back of the envelope) would result in totally
harmless concentrations, undetectable above background. Of course _getting_
the waste evenly distributed over all the cornflakes is another matter, one
for the engineers...

~~~
jessriedel
No one knows with any confidence whether radiation levels below background
levels are harmful or not.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-
threshold_model](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model)

~~~
throwaway5752
Doesn't work that way if you ingest it, right? And obviously not all radiation
is equal (alpha, beta, gamma) and even among those they have varying level of
energy based on source.

The concern here - if I understand correctly - is that it's ingestion and
absorption of a low half live (more energetic) beta emitter.

~~~
jessriedel
No, I don't think the distinction between ingestion and external exposure is
fredley's point. Indeed, a fixed amount of radiation is much _more_
destructive when ingested.

But regardless, that's not the point I'm disputing. I'm disputing whether "the
radiation has been reduced to background levels" necessarily means the
negative effect of the radiation has been made negligible. Rather, assuming
the linear-no-threshold model, the number of radiation-induced deaths will not
decrease.

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adrianN
So oil tankers can apparently carry some 300000 tons. Three or four oil
tankers full would then be enough storage space for the onsite water. Couldn't
we fill some tankers and have them release the water far away from any fishing
grounds?

~~~
bitL
...and damage some preserved ecosystem in the process. Great idea!

~~~
tru3_power
That brings up a good point. There are a few nuclear zones that no one lives
in right (Chernobyl came to mind after watching that hbo show)? Why don’t we
at-least get some value out of of these sad situations and convert one to a
nuclear disposal site?

~~~
m4rtink
IIRC this is already happening in Chernobyl - other than all the wildlife
preservation & tourism there is a big solar power plant being built:

[https://phys.org/news/2018-10-chernobyl-life-solar-
power.htm...](https://phys.org/news/2018-10-chernobyl-life-solar-power.html)

The article says they aim for up to 100 MWe capacity in the future, which
would be nice, yet still illustrates how very powerful nuclear reactors are,
with each of the 4 now inactive Chernobyl blocks producing 1000 MWe (and 3x
times as much heat!).

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rmbryan
Here's Part 2: [https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-2-radioactive-
water-a...](https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-2-radioactive-water-at-
fukushima-daiichi-what-should-be-done/)

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radnuke
"Under the scenarios being discussed, the water would be diluted to 60,000
Bq/L before being released to the ocean. This number alone seems alarming, but
is the concentration level that has been legally allowed to be released from
Japanese nuclear power plants and reprocessing facilities such as Tokaimura
for decades."

This is what needs to happen, any other action is kicking the can down the
road. Another substantial earthquake or time will do the same.

Additionally 60kBq/L is larger compared to other isotopes because of tritium's
properties. As long as this isotope is diluted properly there is no
possibility of biological aggregation or concentration of this, it is just
hydrogen, chemically speaking.

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belenos46
Uhhh, culture a bunch of spores of radiotrophic fungus[0] and dump them all
over the area?

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus)

~~~
keiru
Those are able to feed off radiation, but they don't shield other beings from
it. It's not like oil-eating bacteria.

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warmwaffles
Quick question / thought, why not run it through beds of sand that take some
of the radiation and bury that sand somewhere? Eventually as you run the water
through the sand long enough it should become less and less irradiated right?

~~~
jtms
I’m guessing if there were a way to filter out the tritium they probably
already would have. The article states that they already removed other
isotopes from the water, but not the tritium. This leads me to believe there
is something particularly tricky about separating it from water. Hopefully
someone with some knowledge can weigh in here as I am curious as well.

~~~
Robotbeat
Tritium natural decays pretty quickly. Half life of 12 years.

~~~
beat
Which is a good point, but "half life" doesn't mean "all gone". It'll take
some x cycles to get it down to some safe level y. So the water needs stored
until then, if it's not being released somewhere.

Meanwhile, it keeps accumulating, because the problem is caused by groundwater
leaching into the contaminated reactor area. So at some point, accumulated
volume p will probably exceed available storage area q, which seems to be
where we are now. So it has to be dumped somewhere.

The solution is almost certainly to dump it at sea, but I don't think they can
get away with dumping it right on the coastline, politically.

~~~
pvaldes
> at some point, accumulated volume p will probably exceed available storage
> area q

Maybe they should stack a second row of containers in the second floor then?
(hey, we doubled the available space with only steel beams, some concrete and
a welder! we can build upwards!, is like magic!)

~~~
beat
Gosh, why didn't they think of that?

Every difficult engineering or social problem can be solved by the clever one-
line idea of some dude on the internet.

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keiru
I'm far more worried about what happens when the next tsunami strikes. Getting
rid of tons of contaminated water sounds important, or the sea will come and
take it in one go.

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rbmktechik
That water emits 3.6 Roentgen

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Shorel
So, this means I can eat fish caught in the Pacific ocean again?

Is the radioactivity low enough?

~~~
Robotbeat
It has been low enough the whole time.

Radioactivity is super easy to detect even at harmless levels. Sunburn is a
far (probably a million times? More?) bigger concern with similar effects
(radiation burns possibly leading to cancer), yet people still go outside.

~~~
hutzlibu
Because sun is also healthy in the right dose. Its all about the right
balance..

~~~
Gibbon1
Or lack of sun is also unhealthy by the you can't win for nothing principal.

The whole Fukushima aftermath is a good example of the Mike Tyson Principal:
Everyones got a plan till they get punched in the face. There were plans how
to prevent this kind of mess until it actually happened.

