Hacker News Reader

Comment by pvaldes | Hacker News Reader

> Is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea? No way to tell without any hard numbers.

Having plenty of numbers and data is great, specially for making reports and speeches, but maths are not the only tool that a human brain can use. Often logical reasoning is powerful enough.

Is a fact that radioactivity kills people. No need to demonstrate it statistically. We have enough empirical evidence.

Is a fact also that radioactivity is bioaccumulative.

We don't need a single "four", "seven" or a "twelve" to understand that dumping a bioaccumulative poison in a coastal area inhabited by millions and that provides a considerable part of the diet of this people, is definitely not a good idea.

View on HN

> Is a fact that radioactivity kills people

That is false. Or at least very inaccurate.

High levels of radioactivity kills people. In Europe we receive ~5 mS per year, ~10 in the US. Pilots and radiography doctors are at ~20-50 mS/year. Nobody dies because of this. You could double this background radiation and nothing would happen.

So now the question to ask is: how much do they want to dump, and what would be radiation received by the animals and humans around this place. With this we can discuss tradeoff and make an informed decision.

Most importantly, for such important matters[1], you should not run away screaming as soon as you hear the word "radioactive", but rather think and make decisions based on facts, not fears.

[1] In a context of global warming, a way to produce electricity with virtually zero CO2 is pretty cool. Compare France vs Germany: there is a 7x factor in the CO2 produced (dont take my word on that, go check the numbers yourself). Until we know how to store electricity, our best bet is nuclear, not intermittent solar or wind.

I think you have an incorrect idea of "logic reasoning" if you think that that's a scientifically sound argument. To know whether this contaminated water will be insufficiently diluted in the ocean to cause problems, you definitely do need to use numbers. I mean, if it's diluted to a trillionth of the natural background radiation, then who cares?

The question there then (I think that both will agree with that) is not if is a bad or good idea, is if (or how) they can get away with murder. The answer to this question is yes, of course. Had been doing it since 2011.

The idea that they are getting short of space is ridiculous. The area around the central is not exactly crowded at this moment. To me is obvious that they are getting sort of money, not space, and trying disperately to find excuses to save at any cost, and pass the problem to other.

Murder? Do you have a source for that? To my knowledge nobody died of radiation at Fukushima.

> nobody died of radiation at Fukushima.

Are you sure?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45423575

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles/get-a...

Sorry for misunderstanding getting away with murder, I'm not a native english speaker. Thank you for the denifition.

Not sure he died because of Fukushima: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/09/06/no-the-ca....

Anyway, we are discussing one case. Nobody died during the crisis and after 8 years there is only this case, and this is the second worst nuclear disaster. I am not saying that nuclear is the best, but it is way safer than how people think it is. And definitly way safer than other ways of producing electricity.

> Is a fact that radioactivity kills people. No need to demonstrate it statistically. We have enough empirical evidence.

It's a fact radioactivity kills people over certain thresholds. This is the same as saying water kills people or potatoes kill people. Radioactivity itself is not bio accumulative. Some radioactive particles are bio accumulative.

Your post shows a staggering amount of misinformation which is exactly the reason we need hard numbers.

> Is a fact also that radioactivity is bioaccumulable.

This is a very vague and inaccurate statement. Some radioactive substances bioaccumulate, while others do not.

For example, caesium -137 could be a problem for bioaccumulation, but tritium is not.

"Tepco admitted last year that the water in its tanks still contained contaminants beside tritium"

> Is a fact that radioactivity kills people. No need to demonstrate it statistically. We have enough empirical evidence.

Actually, no. It is highly unlikely that 100 tons per day (steady state rate) of this water being introduced to the Pacific would make a meaningful difference to anyone.

Bear in mind that mixing 100 tons of water with a single cubic kilometer of water is a dilution factor of 10,000,000x. The ocean contains a LOT more than 1 km^3. ;-)

To educate you a bit about low levels of ionizing radiation (hormesis):

>> In a Chinese study which has compared area with average radiation exposure of 2.31 mSv/y with a similar area with 0.96 mSv/y average exposure, the cancer mortality rate was lower in the high-background group (High Background Radiation Research Group 1980). However, this difference was statistically significant only in the oldest-aged group (40–70 years of age), i.e., in those individuals who have the greatest lifelong exposure to high background levels of radiation. In the other large-scale Chinese study, the cancer mortality rate was lower in the area with a relatively high background radiation (74,000 people), while the control group who lived in an area with low background radiation (78,000 people) had a higher rate of cancer mortality (Wei et al. 1990). In a similar Indian study, the cancer incidence/mortality rates was significantly less in areas with a high-background radiation level than in similar areas with a low background radiation level (Nambi and Soman 1987).

"Radiation Hormesis: Historical Perspective and Implications for Low-Dose Cancer Risk Assessment" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2889502/

> The ocean contains a LOT more than 1 km^3.

Is not so simple. There is not such thing as "one ocean", the sea is composed of several water masses, that are layered and often travel thousands of miles without mixing with the rest. In some parts this water is streamed directly again the coast in a narrow band that extends 1000 Km long so instead to face the open sea your water visits each small village in the coast one by one. At other times of the year the same water will travel to US. It depends a lot of the location, wind, month, year, etc...

But people don't want to hear this normally.

Nonsense. At the coast, where Tepco is dumping the water, mixing is extreme due to wave and tidal action. Any water near the surface is also mixed rapidly due to wind action and upwelling.

The only water that's fairly static is deep, cold water. If some of the Tepco contamination goes in that direction, it'll be even better, since it won't be nearly as radioactive by the time it surfaces again...

Maybe Tepco should hire some oceanographers, that we are talking about tidal area is in itself deeply wrong. We had talked here in the past about people discovering that radioactive substances were sticking to the sand and accumulating in some points when nobody (and if somebody not TEPCO), suspected this outcome. If the alternative is spreading it under the rug and by all the beach and coastal area, just keep the damned thing inside a container.

And we are not taking in mind that deliberately contaminating the ocean is typified as a environmental crime in most countries, this radioactive water is lethal to marine organisms but... whatever. They are allowed to do anything they want.

>Is a fact that radioactivity kills people.

Is a fact that water kills people. 100% of people who drink water will eventually die, and people who try to breathe it usually die even sooner.

Yup, water is evil, and tritiated water is even worse. Can enter in the body when eating or drinking water; is assimilated easily by the lungs and will be taken also by the human skin when it rains or if there is fog.

There is a lot of things that can kill people but I doubt that Fukushima's people will find any relief adding one more risk to the list.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com