3rd release of treated water from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear plant ends safely, operator says

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By MARI YAMAGUCHI
Updated 2:20 AM CST, November 20, 2023

TOKYO (AP) — The release of a third batch of treated radioactive wastewater from Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean ended safely as planned, its operator said Monday, as the country’s seafood producers continue to suffer from a Chinese import ban imposed after the discharges began.

Large amounts of radioactive wastewater have accumulated at the nuclear plant since it was damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. It began discharging treated and diluted wastewater into the ocean on Aug. 24 and finished releasing the third 7,800-ton batch on Monday. The process is expected to take decades.

The discharges have been strongly opposed by fishing groups and neighboring countries including China, which banned all imports of Japanese seafood, badly hurting Japanese producers and exporters of scallops and other seafood.

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, said the third release, like the two previous ones, went smoothly and marine samples tested by it and the government showed that levels of all selected radionuclides were far lower than international safety standards.




Read more: https://apnews.com/article/japan-fukushima-wastewater-release-china-430c6f6104a969de7f196bcf372a9a6d

[Maraya1969]

1. Don't know how to feel about that. I don't know if cleaning radioactive waste will work

[NCIndie]

2. It works. And, it worked in this case.

[NNadir]

3. Despite the media stupidity, there is science connected with this issue.

I covered it here: Graphic Account of the Fukushima Tritium Releases Now Underway: Science.

Today, 19,000 people will die, as they have done every day this year, the year before that, and all the years in this century and even before, from air pollution. The science is clear on that too.

It is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

And yet, people will run computers, largely powered by coal, gas and oil to whine about a relatively few atoms of tritium harmlessly entering the sea, where the radioactivity will be dwarfed by natural radioactivity.

If you want to know why the Northern Hemisphere was in flames during its summer, and the Southern is now also in flames, the answer can be found in absurd selective attention.

Without nuclear power the planet's death accelerates, and if one bothers to look, it is accelerating.

Nuclear power need not be without risk; it need not be perfect to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is. To argue otherwise is to scrape the edge of insanity.

[NutmegYankee]

4. Why wouldn't it work?

If you can filter or purify water of harmful metals, why would it suddenly not work on isotopes of those same metals? The only radioactive substance that might escape standard filtration would be tritium (radioactive hydrogen) that got fixed into a heavy water form. That would require a separate method to filter that denser molecule out. And with tritium, the danger is limited since most milk and banana products have higher levels of radiation from potassium isotopes.