> That water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organization drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre, according to Tepco. A becquerel is a measure of radioactivity.
> Monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has backed the plan, will be on-site for the discharge, and samples of water and fish will be taken.
Umm, what's the controversy here?
Fear of radiation, fear that the Japanese government / Fukushima’s owners can’t be trusted to release only what they say they will. Personally it seems safe to me and I’m confident the IAEA’s monitoring will be effective, but then again I’m living on the other side of the planet, so …
As a Japanese citizen, I would feel safer seeing the TEPCO corporation dismantled, and it's leadership behind bars. But the courts declared them not guilty.
A late addition, but I should also add info about Onagawa Nuclear Powerplant. It survived the exact same disaster with no melt down, only because the manager staunchly refused to back down on constant safety training and disaster drills. Of course, to the frustration and chagrin of upper management.
Especially given the fact that Naoto Kan, the prime minister of Japan at the time of the Fukushima accident, had to go to the TEPCO HQ to force them to continue the response instead of giving up and watching a full meltdown. Japan has a lot to do in order to regain the lost trust.
China's statements are sleazy in my opinion. The way they word things makes it sound like Japan is irresponsibly doing whatever they like without oversight, and the world should be doing something about it.
La Hague's retreatment plant puts out 13000 TBq per year, and no one ever cared, nor did anyone see changes in the environment.
Not to mention that humans do not metabolize Tritium, it'll never stay in the human body for more than a few hours. You're more likely to die from the salt in that water than the tritium.
In Ontario Canada:
20 Bq/L limit proposed by the Ontario Drinking Water Advisory Council (ODWAC)
190 is 10 times that limit.
This isn't only about drinking water it's about eating seafood that has absorbed these chemicals (or eaten many fish who have absorbed them). I could understand the caution around seafood in that area for a period of time.
And as the article notes, there are active Nuclear power plants in France and China (and South Korea [2]) that discharge even more tritium per year than is planned at Fukushima. Should people also be cautious about eating seafood from those regions as well?
[1] https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi...
[2] https://www.kns.org/files/pre_paper/17/173%EC%86%A1%EA%B7%9C...
The ocean's average radioactivity is 12Bq/L, and there's a _lot_ of water. A single banana is 20Bq already.
Dump a few million litres of 10000Bq/L water in the ocean over a few years, and the average radioactivity goes to... Still 12Bq/L
Seriously, I have a hard time assuming good will from your post if you do not try to differentiate the amount of dilution happening in a 100km2 50m deep lake vs a 100,000,000km2-sized 5,000m deep ocean.
Drinking salty sea water is generally not recommended.
The waste water of nuclear plant will not directly touch the nuclear materials. However, the water Japan released did.
Just a few minutes ago, The CPC (Communist Party of China) stated that it is suspending all imports of Japanese seafood to protect consumers.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-asia-66599189
> As expected, China has imposed a blanket ban on all Japanese seafood.
> Beijing announced some restrictions last month, but they were limited to 10 prefectures in Japan, including Fukushima and Tokyo. Earlier this week, Hong Kong announced a similar 10 prefecture ban on ‘aquatic produce’.
> South Korea, too, still blocks seafood imports from the Fukushima area. It's a ban that's been in place since 2013 and, although the government's political stance has softened, it is one that it has no intention of lifting.
> These are major customers for Japan and represent a lot of lost business. Nowhere buys more Japanese seafood than mainland China, which imported more than $600m worth last year. Remarkably, Hong Kong is only just behind - spending $520m on marine produce from Japan.
> Given China's consistent and vocal opposition to the wastewater release, it's a scenario that Japan's government probably envisaged. In the short-term, it admits businesses will take a 'significant' hit.
> In this sense, China understands the economic leverage it has over Japan and the question is whether Hong Kong will follow the mainland’s lead with another all-out ban.
> Either way, we're talking about major disruption for Japan's seafood industry and for restaurants in Hong Kong and China.
Yes, people are that afraid of nuclear.
If we'd built the capacity then, we'd have a whole lot less carbon in the atmosphere today.
Did you see Godzilla ? /s
Geopolitics at it's worst.
EDIT: Typo
Japanese domestic politics at it's worst.
I keep seeing this nonsense about "why not dump it into the dirt", as if that ever made any sense. The answer is always simple, there is already a massive amount of Tritium in the ocean.
The water, is also literally sea water. It is salt water taken from the ocean, now with some radioactive isotopes of hydrogen (H20 remember?) which is called tritium. The dilution process literally takes sea water, and mixes it.
Dumping salt water into a local lake or river, or the dirt is literally what starts ecological disasters. But you didn't even do basic research did you?
We can see pollution in water, on land, but not in the air.
