FUKUSHIMA'S NUCLEAR WASTE WILL BE DUMPED INTO THE OCEAN, JAPANESE PLANT OWNER SAYS

And thus... Godzilla was born!

Here's the article for those interested. I'm not a fan of dumping tritium water, but it's not a terrible solution for this particular type of contamination. The type of radiation that tritium emits has very little penetrating power. I'm not concerned that it will contaminate the food chain like a gamma emitter.

I'd look into reclaiming the tritium and selling it if it were my decision to make.

Seems pretty wasteful.

The hazards of nuclear waste are very often exaggerated. I suspect this is partly a result of the psychological effects of a presumed threat that we can neither see, feel or often even measure. We are surrounded by naturally occurring radioactivity, from the sun and from naturally occurring radioactive elements in the soil and air around us, and, depending on where one lives, this dose can be greater than the occupational dose allowed for radiation workers. The wealthy residents of Vail Colorado get a natural dose that approaches three times the average naturally occurring dose due to the combined effects of elevation ( less atmospheric shielding and more radiation from the sun) and the naturally occurring radiation from radioactive elements abundant in the mountain soil, chiefly Thorium and Radium.

As noted above the Tritium contaminate water is hardly a serious hazard. Tritium is a low energy Beta (i.e. electron) emitter which doesn't penetrate the skin, and diluted in the ocean will yield a vanishing dose to humans ( or fish).

It's really, really hard to reclaim tritium. That is the problem in Japan, it's almost impossible to separate it out.

Israel reclaimed tritium from the heavy water moderator in their plutonium production reactor.

Apparently it is done by separating the water into hydrogen and oxygen, cooling the hydrogen to near absolute zero so it is a liquid, then distilling the liquid hydrogen.

True, every maker of H-bombs does the same, but before doing that, they manufacture tritium in their reactor so the concentration is high. Doing that on extremely low concentrations is extremely inefficient. I'm sure if Israel were willing to process this waste, Japan would ship it to them.

the 700K tons, will it be a stream or a batch? If its a batch Id be concernd because the Kurishio currents are clockwise and will be in the areas of Hawaii and our West Coast . 3H, a weak ionizer, is still a problem if ingested and since its acting just as water itll all pass through the urogenital tract to be eliminated.
If ingested or otherwise taken internally, its a problem that would require it to be addressed as a contaminant.

I recall all the building emergency Exit signs that were taken to the Freshkills Landfill after 9/11. Someone finally noted that the reason the phosphors were glowing in the landfill was because there was no special handling at first.

Still, for Fukushima, thats a lot of Tritiated water, I think they should keep it out the current. Markets being what they are, noone will listen to the "its ok, beta int as bad as gamma or alpha". I wouldnt buy tock in Mrs Paul's

A thought about Tritium. Were there any health studies done at all to determine risk /dose?
I thought a lot of the Tritium risk level was calculated from Wepons testing.

I recall the Braidwood site where Tritium was the basis by which the EPA was successfully sued by some Illinois farmers for their Ground Water becoming a Tritium 2 O aquifer. they found tritium as high as in the several million picocuries/L

True. I'd forgotten about that. Ingesting enough heavy water can cause sterility or even be lethal.

This might kill some fish.

Thank you for a rational contribution.

Japanese culture is fascinating.

They are all about personal purity but really couldn't care less about what they might do to the rest of the world (like killing whales to the brink of extinction)

They have been poetic sadists

When the world ends, Japan will either be the first nation to go or the last.