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Omaha Steve

(99,494 posts)
Fri Oct 16, 2020, 12:36 PM Oct 2020

Japan reportedly decides to release treated Fukushima water into the sea

Source: CBS NEWS

Japan will release more than a million tons of treated radioactive water from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea in a decades-long operation, reports said Friday, despite strong opposition from environmentalists, local fishermen and farmers. The release of the water, which has been filtered to reduce radioactivity, is likely to start in 2022 at the earliest, said national dailies the Nikkei, the Yomiuri, and other local media.

The decision ends years of debate over how to dispose of the liquid that includes water used to cool the power station after it was hit by a massive tsunami in 2011.

A government panel said earlier this year that releasing the water into the sea or evaporating it were both "realistic options."

"We can't postpone a decision on the plan to deal with the... processed water, to prevent delays in the decommission work of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant," Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said Friday, without commenting directly on the plan or its timing.



Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima-tsunami-japan-treated-water-sea/

41 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Japan reportedly decides to release treated Fukushima water into the sea (Original Post) Omaha Steve Oct 2020 OP
Just a little radiation over time. What could go wrong? yellowcanine Oct 2020 #1
Well...for starters... Cirque du So-What Oct 2020 #3
Exactly! 2naSalit Oct 2020 #9
"filtered to REDUCE radioactivity" Bayard Oct 2020 #2
As of this date, it is impossible to entirely remove radioactivity from water. no_hypocrisy Oct 2020 #4
They Japanese have been letting the emergency cooling water DENVERPOPS Oct 2020 #12
"We took the big chunks out!" truthisfreedom Oct 2020 #13
Yes those are "realistic" options Miguelito Loveless Oct 2020 #5
But how will this affect West Coast milk? greenjar_01 Oct 2020 #6
Every alternative is bad. mn9driver Oct 2020 #7
There's an old maxim LastDemocratInSC Oct 2020 #8
Beats fossil fuels Yeehah Oct 2020 #17
Sure did make a big mess... 2naSalit Oct 2020 #10
A Global Disaster Kid Berwyn Oct 2020 #11
If you actually knew anything at all about this situation, you would not evoke strontium. NNadir Oct 2020 #24
Thanks for explaining my ignorance. Kid Berwyn Oct 2020 #25
If one lacks a sense of scale and pretends that the only pollution that matters involves... NNadir Oct 2020 #27
So, you can't say when Fukushima will stop polluting the planet. Kid Berwyn Oct 2020 #28
I advise you to read my response. I answered your question You didn't answer mine. NNadir Oct 2020 #29
I care. That's why I answered your question. Kid Berwyn Oct 2020 #30
really? llashram Oct 2020 #14
Putin will love it. roamer65 Oct 2020 #15
Right. "Is it my fault the Japanese powered a nuke with Polonium?" nt JustABozoOnThisBus Oct 2020 #19
Ten billion years of genetic mutations expected next year bucolic_frolic Oct 2020 #16
Really? I'd like to read that abstract or article. mahina Oct 2020 #33
Yeah, what could possibly happen? (Sarcasm) flying_wahini Oct 2020 #18
Nuke the Whales snort Oct 2020 #20
The fear and ignorance this inspires is pretty typical. NNadir Oct 2020 #21
Thank you. While I strongly support a huge increase in wind and solar, GulfCoast66 Oct 2020 #22
Thank you but you have vastly understated the yearly death rate from petrochemicals. NNadir Oct 2020 #23
I was hoping you'd post in here rictofen Oct 2020 #31
Thanks, I appreciate your kind words. As we can see elsewhere... NNadir Oct 2020 #34
You do DU a great service with your posts. Codeine Oct 2020 #37
Thank you. That's very nice of you to take the time to say, particularly... NNadir Oct 2020 #38
Nope. Many of us are listening. StevieM Oct 2020 #39
Agreed. Delphinus Oct 2020 #41
"reportedly" - this CBS article seems to be based on other media reports. sl8 Oct 2020 #26
A little less than 1/5th of a cubic mile of water mahina Oct 2020 #32
Oh no, there goes Tokyo.... Cheezoholic Oct 2020 #35
"Suga vows swift decision on release of Fukushima radioactive water" sl8 Oct 2020 #36
Kick burrowowl Oct 2020 #40

Bayard

(22,005 posts)
2. "filtered to REDUCE radioactivity"
Fri Oct 16, 2020, 12:41 PM
Oct 2020

Not good enough. And its not like its going to stay where they put it.

no_hypocrisy

(46,020 posts)
4. As of this date, it is impossible to entirely remove radioactivity from water.
Fri Oct 16, 2020, 12:46 PM
Oct 2020

Their radioactive water will make its way to the United States and around the world.

DENVERPOPS

(8,789 posts)
12. They Japanese have been letting the emergency cooling water
Fri Oct 16, 2020, 01:32 PM
Oct 2020

run into the ocean for the last 1-2 years!!!!!!!

Since 1-2 years ago, the particular radioactive element they use has already been showing up all over the West Coast of the U.S.

Another Frikkin' Chernobyl, which STILL isn't stabilized......

And don't get cocky about the U.S. thinking we are saints and our nuclear "stuff" is safe. Handover?, upstream from Portland OR, is a impending nightmare disaster........

Miguelito Loveless

(4,454 posts)
5. Yes those are "realistic" options
Fri Oct 16, 2020, 12:49 PM
Oct 2020

Other realistic options:

- Forcing members of the power company to use it as bath water.
- Forcing "regulators" to drink it for the next 30 years.
- Forcing nuclear lobbyist to use the water to irrigate their colon.

All of these option are "realistic", but the question that recipients would be more concerned about is it "SAFE".

mn9driver

(4,419 posts)
7. Every alternative is bad.
Fri Oct 16, 2020, 01:03 PM
Oct 2020

The water being stored is in tanks that won’t last very long. Some of them are already leaking. A lot of water has already flowed into the ocean. This is a nightmare scenario and any solution will be temporary, and also cost billions and billions of dollars. This is not a fixable problem with current technology.

LastDemocratInSC

(3,645 posts)
8. There's an old maxim
Fri Oct 16, 2020, 01:10 PM
Oct 2020

That dilution is the solution to pollution.

Doing that with radioactive materials, in the sea, is just not a good idea.

2naSalit

(86,323 posts)
10. Sure did make a big mess...
Fri Oct 16, 2020, 01:22 PM
Oct 2020

For such a small country. The tsunami wasn't their fault but the placement of the NPP sure was. This is why nuclear power is not a good idea.

NNadir

(33,468 posts)
24. If you actually knew anything at all about this situation, you would not evoke strontium.
Sat Oct 17, 2020, 04:10 AM
Oct 2020

The water in these tanks have been processed by ion exchange.

If someone were to actually know even trivial amounts of chemistry, one would understand that strontium carbonate is only weakly soluble. Because of the ignorance and stupidity of anti-nukes, the amount of carbonate in seawater is going up by billions of tons per year, not that anti-nukes give a shit, anymore than they give a shit about the 6 to 7 million people who die each year from air pollution while they whine ignorantly about Fukushima. Since 2011, this means 54 million to 63 million people have died from air pollution without a peep from anti-nuke idiots.

The radioactivity in these is chiefly trivial amounts of tritium. The world's concentration of tritium peaked in 1963, at which time open air nuclear testing was banned by the chief practices releasing it, open air nuclear testing. This was in the infancy of the commercial nuclear industry, which began saving lives lost from air pollution in significant numbers in the late 1970's and which has continued to do so to the present day.

The seawater has not been stored because it is particularly dangerous. They have been stored because people are invariably stupid and have no idea about what is dangerous and what is not. All those tanks are largely, at this point, public relations.

Almost everyone who died in the 2011 earthquake event were killed by seawater, 20,000 people roughly. It was not because the seawater at the time was radioactive. The people killed by it drowned in it.

Anti-nuke ignorance about things like strontium and cesium is largely responsible for climate change. The so called "renewable energy" response which is claimed to address climate change has failed miserably, at a cost of trillions of dollars, to address climate change; it is failing to address climate change; and it always will fail to address climate change. There is a reason that so called "renewable energy" was abandoned by humanity in the early 19th century, and all the reactionary rhetoric in the world cannot change this reason.

It follows that anti-nuke ignorance will increase, by vast amounts, the deaths related to the intrusion of seawater into coastal cities.

19,000 people died yesterday, from the release of dangerous fossil fuel waste directly into the atmosphere. 19,000 will die today. 19,000 people will die every day in 2021, and in 2022, and in 2023. It would be interesting, and perhaps, ethically appealing, if people gave as much of a shit about these people who are dying constantly, every damn day, as they did about a few picocuries per liter of tritium in seawater tanks.

But they won't. They just continue to mutter stupidly about Fukushima as if it actually mattered on the scale of the environmental disaster through which we are living because of appeals to ignorance.

Kid Berwyn

(14,795 posts)
25. Thanks for explaining my ignorance.
Sat Oct 17, 2020, 09:32 AM
Oct 2020

So when will the three Fukushima reactors that melted down stop polluting the planet?

NNadir

(33,468 posts)
27. If one lacks a sense of scale and pretends that the only pollution that matters involves...
Sat Oct 17, 2020, 10:34 AM
Oct 2020

...radioactivity, and because of their ignorance and lack of a shred of scientific knowledge or ethical standing, value the death of say, ten people from radioactivity over tens of millions of people who die from other forms of pollution, the answer is probably "never."

Of course, I find people who think this way intellectually and morally appalling, but that's just me.

These sort of people think that every radioactive atom will tunnel right to their little brains and kill them. They're impossibly ignorant. This is amusing, since neurotransmission involves potassium channels, and all of the potassium on earth is radioactive, from the existence of primordial potassium 40. A 70 kg human being contains about 140 grams of potassium, which contains about 16 milligrams of potassium-40, the radioactive isotope, and as the specific activity of potassium-40, half-life 1.277 billion years, is 251,000 Bequerels per gram, this implies that every thinking and non-thinking person on earth has about 4,200 Bequerel in their flesh, much distributed to brain and nerve tissue.

Fat people like me are even more radioactive, since we contain more potassium than that.

As for the ocean, if one can do simple high school or college level nuclear calculations, one can calculate that the ocean contains about 530 billion curies of potassium-40, or 1.95 X 10^(22) Beq of this isotope, which ignores the radioactivity associated with the decay of the 4.5 billion tons of uranium the ocean contains. Anti-nuke ignorance, and the stupidity of the journalists who picked up on a story about a few atoms of Fukushima cesium in a tuna fish and made it into a international festival of Q-Anon quality paranoia, led to this highly amusing paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Evaluation of radiation doses and associated risk from the Fukushima nuclear accident to marine biota and human consumers of seafood (Madigan et al., PNAS June 25, 2013 110 (26) 10670-1067). They were responding to the hula boo raised by more than 1000 newspaper articles that covered their fine original paper, which used Cs-134 released by the reactors as a tracer for Tuna migrations, much as cesium-137 from Cold War atmospheric nuclear testing is used as a tracer for soil erosion related to modern agriculture.

I hope I gave you the answer to the question you asked and did so while speaking the language of the dumb assed anti-nukes who are killing the planet by their selective attention.

Now I have a question for you:

When do you think the mercury released by the last 100 years of coal burning, fifty years of which was unnecessary since nuclear energy was commercialized, will stop poisoning the planet?

Any idea?

I read articles in every issue several of the major scientific environmental journals and write articles here about my readings which may be found in my journal, not all of which are about nuclear fuel, although many are, since nuclear fuels are a subject in which I certainly qualify as an expert, as I've been studying them on my free time for over three decades.

It is rare that the contents pages of an issue doesn't contain reference to mercury pollution. If one searches, uses the search terms "mercury" and "environment" in Google Scholar, one gets more than 2.5 million hits in about 70 milliseconds.

Since I care about the environment, and have spent nearly my entire adult life - I'm an old man - thinking and reading about it, I often muse to myself that the reason that people engage Trumpism and similar appeals to ignorance is related to the fact that no one has given a rat's ass about mercury, a well known neurotoxin that can lead to insanity. (This effect famously accounts for the "Mad Hatter" character in Alice in Wonderland, a region in which all of us are now living.) Certainly anti-nukism is insane, perhaps as insane as Trumpism.

As it happens, before the rise of coal use - which has been the fastest rising source of primary energy on this planet in the 21st century - most of the world's mercury was sequestered as mercury sulfide, the mineral known as cinnabar, which can be made to release mercury by heating. In our mad quest to use up all of the world's best ores to rob all future generations of a shred of a chance of leading satisfying lives, we have oxidized almost all of the sulfides on this planet to sulfuric acid.

We're wonderful people, and we love to brag about how "green" we are.

Of course, "green" can be another word for "rube."

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

Have a nice weekend.

Kid Berwyn

(14,795 posts)
28. So, you can't say when Fukushima will stop polluting the planet.
Sat Oct 17, 2020, 12:19 PM
Oct 2020

In answer to your question about mercury, it will stop contaminating people and the environment when governments value human life more than profit.

NNadir

(33,468 posts)
29. I advise you to read my response. I answered your question You didn't answer mine.
Sat Oct 17, 2020, 12:34 PM
Oct 2020

I stated, using the appalling and intellectual and ethical mindset of the anti-nukes, "never" since these poorly educated immoral types think that every radioactive atom will kill them and that if anyone dies from radiation, that justifies the roughly 70 million deaths that have taken place from air pollution since 2010.

They're asses and incredibly stupid, but hey, I'm used to live in times where ignorance is celebrated, not reviled.

My contention is nuclear energy need not be perfect, it need not be without risk to be vastly superior to every other form of energy. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is. I then did something dumb shit anti-nukes can't do: I appealed to scale.

The climate scientist Jim Hansen did an outstanding job of quantifying how many lives nuclear energy saved. I linked it earlier. If, like my answer, it went unread, that's not surprising. Ignorance loves to perpetuate itself.

If radiation leaking from the Fukushima reactors ended up killing 1000 people - something that is unlikely - it would amount to about 1 hour and 15 minutes associated with the death toll that will happen in the immediate future because we don't use nuclear energy to its full extent.

It is very clear that dangerous fossil fuel plants kill people when they operate normally, not only in the extreme cases.

Predictably, when I asked about the question about when mercury will stop polluting the planet, you ignored it.

It is the habit of anti-nukes not to give a shit about how many people die from dangerous fossil fuels because we don't use nuclear energy. The current refusal to address that question fits perfectly well into that mentality.

Got it?

No?

I couldn't care less.

mahina

(17,616 posts)
33. Really? I'd like to read that abstract or article.
Mon Oct 19, 2020, 07:52 PM
Oct 2020

Could you share? Mahalo.

I do feel sad for every little baby crab or octo.

NNadir

(33,468 posts)
21. The fear and ignorance this inspires is pretty typical.
Fri Oct 16, 2020, 08:19 PM
Oct 2020

The East Coast of Australia burned, the West Coast of the United States is burning, 7 million people die every damned year from air pollution, the death toll from heat waves have yet to be measured, but will surely be enormous, and people who have never opened a science book in their lives are terrified of tritium in Fukushima's seawater.

The inordinate fear, the ignorance, surrounding radioactivity is a big part of the reason that the planet is literally choking to death from dangerous fossil fuel waste, which by the way, includes big dollops of radioactivity from NORM (naturally occurring radioactive materials), chiefly radium and its daughter radon, but also healthy dollops of polonium-210. That's right folks, the natural gas wells that back up the so called "renewable energy" industry - without which the so called "renewable energy" industry would die - extract radium, and it's just dumped in big containment ponds.

It would be an interesting world - one far more intelligent and pleasant in which to live - if people gave as much of a shit about the amount of brain killing mercury and lead released every damned day by coal combustion, including the coal combustion to make steel as they do about tritium releases which will almost certainly prove entirely harmless.

The Gulf of Mexico is more radioactive than any body of water on earth because of all the oil and gas wells drilled in it.

But...but...but...FUKUSHIMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know, 20,000 people died in the natural disaster that destroyed the reactors from seawater. How many people died from radiation again? Are any of the people who fear nuclear energy as a result of this disaster similarly concerned about the safety of coastal cities.

19,000 people will die today from air pollution. Anybody give a shit? No? I thought so.

Here is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.

Nuclear energy saves lives.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

It follows that anti-nuke hysteria kills people, and, in fact, killing the planet, not that anyone would be inspired to think critically with respect to that fact.

GulfCoast66

(11,949 posts)
22. Thank you. While I strongly support a huge increase in wind and solar,
Fri Oct 16, 2020, 09:14 PM
Oct 2020

They won’t be enough.

Nuclear energy is going to play a big part in our future if we are serious about totally eliminating fossil fuels. Which I am. Most likely smaller less waste producing plants with new technologies we already have.

There have been a few very horrible incidents with nuclear, no doubt. But hundreds of thousands die yearly as a result of Petro-chemicals. However, they happen in dribs and drabs with no headline.

The waste sites for spent nuclear fuel are a problem. The waste from the Petro-chemical industry is spewed out into the environment by the ton. Daily.

Our position is not popular on DU. But that’s what an opinion site is about.

NNadir

(33,468 posts)
23. Thank you but you have vastly understated the yearly death rate from petrochemicals.
Sat Oct 17, 2020, 03:54 AM
Oct 2020

You have also vastly understated by many orders of magnitude the amount of dangerous fossil fuel waste dumped each year.

The annual amount of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide is 35 billion tons. Added to this is many millions of tons of other dangerous fossil fuel wastes, containing for example, mercury, lead and interestingly, uranium. It has been argued that coal, despite the ignorant assumption it is going away - it isn't, it's been the fastest growing source of energy in the 21st century - has lead to 100 times as much radiation exposure as nuclear plants: ORNL Review Vol. 26, No. 3&4, 1993

As I pointed out in my previous post, with reference to the Lancet article on worldwide causes of death and disability from all risks, air pollution is responsible for between 6 and 7 million deaths per year. About half of these deaths result from the danger combustion of "renewable" biomass and trash, half from dangerous fossil fuel combustion.

The anti-nuclear rhetoric which is regrettably popular on the left - as you note - is our response to creationism, and for that matter, the refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of Covid-19. It is contemptuous of science, and is frankly, immoral.

I have been studying nuclear fuels for over thirty years in the primary scientific literature, beginning as an uneducated anti-nuke, when looking into Chernobyl. If you leaf through my journal on this website, which is desultory, you may see that I do not consider used nuclear fuels to be so called "nuclear waste." These used fuels are, in my studied opinion, valuable resources which are the last best hope to save the world from climate change.

rictofen

(236 posts)
31. I was hoping you'd post in here
Mon Oct 19, 2020, 05:53 PM
Oct 2020

Well said. I kind of felt like posting but I wasn't going to do it justice. Thanks for all your posts on this crucial topic.



NNadir

(33,468 posts)
34. Thanks, I appreciate your kind words. As we can see elsewhere...
Wed Oct 21, 2020, 12:15 AM
Oct 2020

...in this thread, where I was being pressed to address a very idiotic soundbite "gotcha" about how Fukushima was somehow the end of the world, this on a planet where 19,000 people per day die from air pollution, it can be very challenging to address reality, regrettably, even on the nominally political left.

I never seems to amaze me how clueless people can be about obvious things.

It does give some insight, I suppose, to the psychological mechanisms of Trumpism, I suppose, how very much people hear only what they want to hear. Again regrettably, it extends beyond Magats sometimes into our own world.

The late Nobel Laureate Burton Richter made the point that even the Fukushima reactors, despite being destroyed and releasing much of their volatile radioactive fission products, saved lives:

Opinion on “Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident” by J. E. Ten Hoeve and M. Z. Jacobson, Energy Environ. Sci., 2012, 5, DOI: 10.1039/c2ee22019

From the text:

It seems clear that considering only the electricity generated by the Fukushima plant, nuclear is much less damaging to health than coal and somewhat better that gas even after including the accident. If nuclear power had never been deployed in Japan the effects on the public would have much worse. The same conclusion would most likely result in a study of morbidity, but it is less clear to me how to compare the Kerwitt et al. and the T–J numbers.


Professor Richter was far gentler with Professor Jacobson than I would be. Professor Jacobson is a toxic fool whose anti-nuke work is actively killing people, in vast numbers I would add.
 

Codeine

(25,586 posts)
37. You do DU a great service with your posts.
Sun Oct 25, 2020, 05:24 PM
Oct 2020

Please know that many of us appreciate the yeoman’s work you perform in the fight against hysteria and ignorance.

NNadir

(33,468 posts)
38. Thank you. That's very nice of you to take the time to say, particularly...
Sun Oct 25, 2020, 09:07 PM
Oct 2020

...because I often feel I am screaming into a void.

sl8

(13,665 posts)
26. "reportedly" - this CBS article seems to be based on other media reports.
Sat Oct 17, 2020, 10:05 AM
Oct 2020

According to the BBC, the governmentment hasn't made a final decision yet:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54566978

mahina

(17,616 posts)
32. A little less than 1/5th of a cubic mile of water
Mon Oct 19, 2020, 07:51 PM
Oct 2020

Just for context.

I don’t know honestly know what else they could do with it. Bottle it as trump water?

Cheezoholic

(2,005 posts)
35. Oh no, there goes Tokyo....
Sat Oct 24, 2020, 12:20 PM
Oct 2020

History shows again and again
How nature points out the folly of men

Godzilla!

sl8

(13,665 posts)
36. "Suga vows swift decision on release of Fukushima radioactive water"
Sat Oct 24, 2020, 03:19 PM
Oct 2020
https://japantoday.com/category/politics/suga-vows-swift-decision-on-release-of-fukushima-radioactive-water

Suga vows swift decision on release of Fukushima radioactive water

Oct. 22 06:30 am JST

JAKARTA
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Wednesday the government will swiftly decide what to do with treated radioactive water at the crisis-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant following reports of a plan to release the water into the sea.

"We cannot postpone the issue forever. We would like to make a decision responsibly as soon as possible," Suga told a press conference in Jakarta as he wrapped up his first foreign trip since taking office in mid-September. The premier visited Indonesia and Vietnam.

"There has been no decision on when or how to deal with the water," Suga said. The government plans to deepen discussions on the matter and work on measures to prevent reputational damage linked to radiation, he added.

[...]

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