Dumping 1M gallons of radioactive water in Hudson is 'best option,' per Indian Point nuclear owner

[Caribbeans]

A sign warning of radioactive materials is seen on a fence around a containment building at Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant. Photo: Seth Wenig (AP)

Dumping 1M gallons of radioactive water in Hudson is ‘best option,’ per Indian Point nuclear plant owner

The Gothamist | Rosemary Misdary | Feb 17, 2023

The owner of the defunct Indian Point nuclear facility says it’s planning to dump about 1 million gallons of radioactive water into the Hudson River. The move, which the company describes as the “best option” for the waste, could happen as early as August.

A Feb. 2 meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board heated up when the plant’s owner Holtec International disclosed the plan as part of its lengthy closure process. The contaminated water could just naturally — and safely — decay in storage onsite.

Environmental groups and residents are also concerned this could harm their community, as the Hudson River is already a federally designated toxic Superfund site. Rich Burroni, Holtec’s site vice president for Indian Point, agreed to give the community at least a month's notice before any radioactive discharge into the Hudson River begins.

But Holtec is well within its legal rights and permits to discharge waste at the same rate as it did when operating, and it does not need federal, state or local approval to dump the contaminated water. This practice is standard for nuclear plants....more
https://gothamist.com/news/dumping-radioactive-water-hudson-river-best-option-indian-point-nuclear-plant-owner-holtec

Will those who complain about Japan's plans to dump nuclear waste into the pacific be consistent? Someone once said "“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" so don't worry, be happy.

BBC: Fukushima nuclear disaster: Japan to release radioactive water into sea this year

Grace Tsoi | 13 January 2023

Japan says it will release more than a million tonnes of water into the sea from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant this year.

After treatment the levels of most radioactive particles meet the national standard, the operator said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says the proposal is safe, but neighbouring countries have voiced concern.

The 2011 Fukushima disaster was the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl...more
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64259043

RELATED:

Indian Point nuclear plant reeks of troubled history

As New York’s governor and other critics wage an ongoing campaign to shut the facility down citing leaks and old age, nearby residents explain complicated tale

The Guardian | Sam Thielman | 28 Mar 2016

Outside the Westchester Diner in Peekskill, New York, about 40 miles from New York’s Central Park, a reactor dome crests the trees behind an overpass like a giant’s bald head.

It’s one of two at Indian Point Energy Center, at the bank of the Hudson river in neighboring Buchanan, among the oldest nuclear power plants still in operation, and a monument to the energy industry’s resistance to years of work by concerned scientists, locals and state officials to close down a facility that only last month dumped a plume of radioactive waste into their groundwater.

Indian Point’s two working reactors opened in the early 1970s and have had a lot of people worried for a long time. Five years ago the New York Times wondered if it was “America’s Fukushima” – the Japanese site of the world’s worst radiation crisis since Chernobyl. In February the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, called its operation “unacceptable” – he wants the plant closed.

It’s easy to see the source of his concern. The population density around Indian Point is of more than 2,100 people per square mile, by far the greatest for any of the US’s 61 nuclear power plants. Many of those people live and work in the plant’s shadow with growing unease...more
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/28/indian-point-nuclear-plant-new-york-troubled-history

Those advocating nuclear boondoggles to boil water won't be around to worry about the waste. That's for their kids kids. And they have no problem with having future generations tend to it. Disgraceful.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

1. The amount of radioactivity in the dispersed water is within scientifically established limits.

[Duppers]

2. How stupid do they think people are?❗

Boiling water will not eliminate contaminants like heavy metals, salts, and chemicals but ONLY bacteria, viruses, and protozoa.

An 7th grader would know this.

[progree]

9. Nobody is advocating boiling the water to solve the radiation or any other pollutant problem

with Indian Point's water, at least not from the OP's excerpt. I didn't read all the linked articles, so maybe I missed something. The only thing in the OP excerpt that talks about boiling water is:

"Those advocating nuclear boondoggles to boil water won't be around to worry about the waste."

That's apparently caribbean's comment. The usual meme about how boiling water with nuclear energy is way overdoing the relatively "simple" task of boiling water blah blah as some present it. (One boils water to generate steam to spin the turbine-generators that produce the electricity).

Trouble is the anywhere-near-economic large-scale alternative ways of boiling water are fossil-fueled.  

Sorry if I'm not understanding what your comment refers to

How stupid do they think people are? Boiling water will not eliminate contaminants like heavy metals, salts, and chemicals but ONLY bacteria, viruses, and protozoa. A 7th grader would know this.

[Duppers]

12. I'm sorry.

Text from a previous post:
"Those advocating nuclear boondoggles to boil water won't be around to worry about the waste. That's for their kids kids. And they have no problem with having future generations tend to it. Disgraceful."

I mistook the "boil water" quote here.
Thanks for clarifying.

My apologies.

[progree]

13. No problem at all, its all good 😊 /nt

[NNadir]

3. But burning fossil fuels, dumping the waste into the planetary atmosphere to make hydrogen...

...to satiate stupid fantasies, putting up stupid Potemkin pictures of wilderness destroyed with solar arrays that will be electronic waste in 20 years is a good idea.

Does anyone in the stupidity squad ever report how many people died from radiation exposure from nuclear plants in the last twenty years?

What is death toll from radiation from Fukushima? How does it compare to the death toll from seawater in the same event?

How is it that the anti-nuke hydrogen car worshipping set doesn't give a rat's ass about the 18,000 people who will die today from air pollution?

Since Fukushima, about 80 million people died from air pollution.

Is there some point at which anti-nukes will give a shit about these dead? There isn't? They don't read scientific publications like the one that follows?

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).

An excerpt:

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).

It would be interesting if the critics of the last best hope for providing humanity with primary energy, instead of junk cartoons about storing useless so called "renewable energy" with hydrogen, batteries, and other destructive energy storage fantasies that have done nothing to address climate change, could find as many people that will die from radiation at Fukushima reported in the primary scientific literature - not cartoonish internet bullshit - as will die from air pollution in the next six hours, their big stupid boogeyman. That would be around 4500 dead.

There are lots and lots and lots and lots of papers on radiation at Fukushima in the primary scientific literature. I have lots of them in my files, because I read the scientific literature.

But they can't find these radiation deaths. And even if they did, they still wouldn't give a shit about the 80,000,000 million people who died from air pollution while they whined stupidly and incessantly about Fukushima, this in contempt for humanity.

As for hydrogen bullshit, this data still applies, just as it has for the last 50 years.



The caption:

Figure 1. Global current sources of H2 production (a), and H2 consumption sectors (b).

Progress on Catalyst Development for the Steam Reforming of Biomass and Waste Plastics Pyrolysis Volatiles: A Review Laura Santamaria, Gartzen Lopez, Enara Fernandez, Maria Cortazar, Aitor Arregi, Martin Olazar, and Javier Bilbao, Energy & Fuels 2021 35 (21), 17051-17084]

It is, of course, unsurprising to hear anti-nukes cheer for coal, oil and gas, with the cute little hydrogen shell game on the cover. It's been their chief course of action in the last 20 years here and elsewhere, a period where the concentration of CO2 in the planetary atmosphere rose by about 50 ppm to around 420 ppm.

These people lack, even at the most primitive level, a sense of decency, as always.

[NNadir]

7. You think it's from radiation? Climate change had nothing to do with it? You do realize...

...that the ocean contains about 500 billion curies of radioactivity from potassium 40, don't you?

I did the calculation here: How radioactive is the ocean?

Radioactive potassium-40 has always been in the ocean, since they formed, for billions of years. However it has diminished somewhat over the millennia, but life evolved in its presence. The half-life of K-40 is about 1.3 billion years. A 70 kg human being has about 3,500 Beq of it in their bodies without which they would die, since potassium is an essential element, all of which contains radioactive isotopes.

The fear of tritium, whipped up by anti-nukes, each dumber than the previous one, is a nonsense burger that kills people.

Shutting Indian Point and replacing it with fossil fuel generated electricity will kill people, pure and simple.

Nuclear energy need not be risk free to be vastly superior to everything else, thus saving lives. It only has to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is.

When you see carrying on about dumping mildly (very low level) tritiated water, you are observing the march of deadly ignorance.

[NNadir]

10. Um, do you drink seawater?

It's fucking tritium in seawater. If the water were desalinated, I would drink it if asked, mostly because I'm educated. Of course I would do it only to demonstrate the silliness of people who worry day and night about radiation without giving a rat's ass about how much coal based mercury is their water.

You do realize that people buy tritium watches.

People do drink tritiated water. They drank high concentrations during the 1950's and 1960's during the era of nuclear weapons testing, but tritium naturally forms in the upper atmosphere from spallation reactions:

http://www-naweb.iaea.org/napc/ih/documents/global_cycle/vol%20ii/cht_ii_05.pdf

The water on this planet has always been tritiated. The link I gave, gives a scientific reference for the volume of the ocean. To what do you imagine the concentration of tritium will climb if the water is released into the Pacific ocean? Into the Hudson River?

You say it's not 'safe." Compared to what? Exactly how many people and fish do you imagine will be killed by tritiated water released into the Hudson River? As many people as died from the PBC's accumulating in fish from the same River?

How do you know it's dangerous? Is it based on some level of radiation, in units of Beq/liter? Some special knowledge of toxicology?

How about opening and reading this paper by people called "scientists" on the subject of addressing tritium hysteria in the general public? Human Health and the Biological Effects of Tritium in Drinking Water: Prudent Policy Through Science – Addressing the ODWAC New Recommendation

How much money exactly should we spend to satiate the fears of people who don't take science seriously?

I can't be any clearer on this than I am. Fear of low level radiation kills people, because conversations like this one are seen as having a modicum of rationality, because it is utilized with zero rational information to attack nuclear energy.

The world is radioactive. It always has been. It always will be. To save human lives, and indeed to save the entire planet we have to use radioactive materials and understand relative risks.

The linear no-threshold hypothesis in the opinion of a growing array of health physicists is purely a bit of 1940's mysticism, not supported by molecular biology, a science that did not even exist when the sloppy studies that led to the LNT were conducted.

I'm sorry, but there's nothing "green," about carrying on about this. The carbon released to make the steel for the tanks to contain the tritiated water in service to public fear and ignorance has surely killed more people than the tritium in them will when released.

In fact the carbon burned to produce electricity for people to whine about these tank releases on the internet will kill more people than the tritium will.

I deplore this kind of nonsense. Again, it kills.

[keithbvadu2]

6. Best? More like least bad.