Tritium was not detected in the latest sample of two olive flounders caught Sept. 24, the Fisheries Agency said.

No detectable amount of tritium has been found in fish samples taken from waters near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, where the discharge of treated radioactive water into the sea began a month ago, the government said Monday.

Tritium was not detected in the latest sample of two olive flounders caught Sunday, the Fisheries Agency said on its website. The agency has provided almost daily updates since the start of the water release, in a bid to dispel harmful rumors both domestically and internationally about its environmental impact.

The results of the first collected samples were published Aug. 9, before the discharge of treated water from the complex commenced on Aug. 24. The water had been used to cool melted nuclear fuel at the plant but has undergone a treatment process that removes most radionuclides except tritium.

  • Turkey_Titty_city@kbin.social
    152·
    1 年前

    ignorance and paranoia about radioactivity go hand in hand.

    i know so many otherwise smart people who lose it on this issue. because they just think any radioactivity = destroy planet forever . completely ignorant to how it actually works, and just think every power plant must eventually chernobyl and that one barrel of nuclear waste is enough to destroy 1000s of miles or something equally absurd.

    totally sad.

    • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.netEnglish
      4·
      1 年前

      Yet one litre of oil can contaminate over a million litres of water.

      I talked about how water released are usually modeled and risk assessments done in another comment abour the pending release a few weeks ago but I can’t find it.

      While I can’t speak for all regulatory bodies, and you could be a shitass and release toxic crap without doing a risk assesmsent, it’s very unlikely that this is the case here, particularly because it’s TREATED water that’s being released. That means they have a treatment system (there’s a fucking rabbit hole and half…) which they are using to treat the water to some acceptable criteria/standard. This mean some sort of modeling and risk calculation has been done otherwise they would have just gone ‘yolo pump the water into the ocean’.

        • roguetrick@kbin.social
          4·
          1 年前

          Tritated water is toxic just like heavy water. You’d just have to drink a truly ridiculous amount for it to be toxic, to the point that the radiation is a much bigger problem than the toxicity.

          Edit: fully tritated water is actually worse, now that I think about it. The radioactive decay will periodically knock off a hydrogen atom, which makes it very reactive. That’s not what this is though.

          • fubo@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 年前

            Water is toxic, if you drink an only mildly ridiculous amount and don’t get some salt too. I say this having been hospitalized for hyponatremia several years back, due to unwisely drinking plain water instead of anything with salts in it when sick.

            • roguetrick@kbin.social
              2·
              1 年前

              Oh for sure, I’m a nurse. Heavy water/tritated water is cytotoxic like a chemotherapy drug however, vs just messing up your osmotic balance. Your proteins conformiational structure from hydrogen bonds can’t function correctly with it and you can’t replicate your DNA/RNA because of the difference in size of the hydrogen and your cells die. Starts with diarrhea, ends with death. You need like a 20% proportion of it to see those effects though, so like I said, truly ridiculous amounts of tritated water. More than the entirety that they’re releasing.

  • ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    132·
    1 年前

    The ocean is 1.335 × 10^21 litres. That number is stupid big. There are 7.5 × 10^18 grains of sand on Earth. If every person in Japan flushed a litre of the reactor water down their toilet, it would be diluted to nothing in no time at all.

  • hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    92·
    1 年前

    I remember commenting on a post where China condemned Japan for doing this.

    I asked ppl there “is this actually bad or is this kind of par for the course of getting rid of the dangers left behind in Fukushima?” And most of them were like “it’s not a common occurrence but it’s not inherently dangerous and it’s not that big of a deal”

    To me it looks like the vast majority of objections to this came from strategic propaganda related to domestic relations of China and/or other nations.

      • blindbunny@lemmy.mlEnglish
        310·
        1 年前

        I don’t doubt nuclear power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.worldEnglish
          71·
          1 年前

          This is the most ridiculous argument I’ve ever seen against nuclear energy. “Sure it works, but people are evil!”

          I can apply that to everything. Communism? I don’t doubt it works, but humans build and also destroy.

          • blindbunny@lemmy.mlEnglish
            07·
            1 年前

            This here is capitolist FUD, but I’m sure in all your great wisdom think humans can be trusted not to fuck up a 5th time.

            • osarusan@kbin.social
              71·
              1 年前

              All you said that was humans mess up everything we do, as if that were something meaningful to say. That is not an argument against nuclear. That’s an argument against absolutely everything humans do. It’s meaningless. Look:

              I don’t doubt solar power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.

              I don’t doubt coal power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.

              I don’t doubt hydro power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.

              I don’t doubt steam power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.

              All of those are exactly as meaningless as what you wrote. So don’t go on snarkily about my “great wisdom” like you’ve made any point at all. Nuclear is safer than oil and coal and gas, which is where the majority of the world’s energy comes from right now. Fossil fuels are actively destroying our planet right now, and you’re spreading nuclear FUD about things that haven’t happened. That’s not helpful, and it doesn’t match the reality we live in.

            • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              1 年前

              ???

              The USSR and Russia were huge players in nuclear technology and contributed a lot to the field. I actually can’t think of an energy source that has a closer connection to communism.

          • blindbunny@lemmy.mlEnglish
            05·
            1 年前

            Chernobyl was about the worst case scenario, and most of the blame is on dogshit soviet designs.

            It’s happened three other times since then…

            Edit: one other time

            • Xtallll@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              3·
              1 年前

              Where and when were the 3 other nuclear meltdowns? I wasn’t able to find anything with a quick search, maybe I’m not looking for the right terms.

  • Orionza@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    1 年前

    I like this but would rather see a multi country coordinated oceanic study. We’re all in this together.

  • zephyreks@programming.devEnglish
    7·
    1 年前

    People have been far more concerned about the efficacy of the ALPS system at extracting other contaminants than they are about tritium contamination. The ALPS system is unproven and the wastewater they’re releasing would be pretty toxic as far as other radioactive isotopes is concerned if the ALPS system isn’t doing it’s job perfectly.

  • Snipe_AT@lemmy.atay.devEnglish
    82·
    1 年前

    When I was on nuclear submarines I got less radiation than a single flight on an aircraft. And you gotta know there were less-than-secret competitions on who could rack up the most mrem. Could never get close to significant.

      • bobman@unilem.orgEnglish
        123·
        1 年前

        Woah, it’s almost like the universe didn’t give us easily accessible energy for doing nothing.

        Wow. Let me know when oil doesn’t need to be extracted, refined, and doesn’t produce waste.

      • Snipe_AT@lemmy.atay.devEnglish
        32·
        1 年前

        I appreciate the discourse, my only intent with my comment was to give a perspective as to how operationally safe it is. That is not to say I would be alright with being in the Reactor Compartment while it was operational, that would lead to certain and painful death.

        I haven’t really considered the relative environmental impact of the extraction, refinement, removal, and waste management of nuclear fuel and how that compares to other alternatives like coal or gas. I would suspect that carbon emissions from that process are significantly more.

        I would however expect that the environmental impact is significantly less for the other items on your list like transportation and more specifically operation.

        You do seem to be pretty aware of the state of energy research, do you happen to have any recommended papers to take a look at that might shed some light on the overall environmental impacts of nuclear and how they compare to the current alternatives?

        • derpgon@programming.devEnglish
          0·
          1 年前

          If you have 100x emissions, but 1000x the efficiency of the fuel (numbers may be overblown), then it’s still better for the environment.

          Nuclear waste is probably the biggest issue, as we have to take care of the storage site.

          However, we could always either repurpose it or yeet it into space, away from any other close planet collision course.

          • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            1 年前

            Nuclear waste is probably the biggest issue, as we have to take care of the storage site.

            Newer reactor designs are able to consume nuclear waste and use it as fuel. Look up breeder reactors. If we want to minimize nuclear waste, we need to build more reactors ironically.

          • lud@lemm.eeEnglish
            11·
            1 年前

            While yeeting things into space sounds cool, I am sceptical of the viability of that strategy.

            Putting things into space is very expensive and putting them in a solar orbit is even more expensive.

            Isn’t nuclear waste also really heavy? And guess what that means, it’s getting more expensive.

            It also isn’t very environmentally friendly to send shit into space and of course even less friendly considering how heavy nuclear waste is.

            • Dave.@aussie.zoneEnglish
              1·
              1 年前

              In my opinion, they should find a nice, stable continental plate and in the middle of that, drill some relatively small diameter boreholes. Drill them ten or twenty kilometres apart to a depth that exercises our current technology, drop sealed waste into the bottom of said holes, top them off to 200m below the surface with concrete, and then backfill the rest with dirt.

              After that, remove all evidence of anything ever being there on the surface.

              If you have the technology to drill a hole 3-4km deep then you have also the tech to detect radioactive material.

              Small diameter boreholes that kind of distance apart are basically undetectable by geophysical survey with our current technology so nothing in particular would ever be seen.

              The quantity of worldwide high level radioactive waste that can’t be reprocessed could easy be disposed of in this manner.

              • Obi@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                2·
                1 年前

                The high tech equivalent of a cat burying their shit. While I like the idea of yeeting stuff into space, this is also beautifully simple.

                I remember talks of building places with the use of symbols or other non-linguistic messaging to keep future populations at bay, I think that was in Finland or something.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        15·
        1 年前

        You were downvoted because you told the truth about nuclear power, not because people thought you were responding to a question that wasn’t asked.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
          52·
          1 年前

          They were downvoted for telling a half truth. Technically true, but ignoring the context that makes it a good thing. Sure, it needs to be extracted, refined, and (to be clean) contained. All energy sources need the same, except dirty energy at least doesn’t contain their waste.

  • Piers@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 年前

    Two questions: If it’s only tritrium why does anyone really care? Why couldn’t they just sell it rather than dump it?

    I thi k I just realised those questions both have the same answer…

  • roguetrick@kbin.social
    2·
    1 年前

    If their reporting of the quantity of tritium is accurate, India’s candu style plants release more incidentally than this will.

    • chaogomu@kbin.social
      21·
      1 年前

      Which is what the experts have been saying since the beginning, but the anti-nuclear propagandists explicitly ignore the experts.

  • halfempty@kbin.social
    32·
    1 年前

    Sample size is critical to get a realistic result of the tritium toxicity. In this case, they sampled only 64 fish! That would not yield a statistically significant result!

  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.caEnglish
    11·
    1 年前

    Probably because the octopuses used it all for their science experiments. It’s a scientific fact that octopuses hoard tritium. Source: Spider-man 2.