Japan needs to release 1M tonnes of water from Fukushima nuclear plant | Hacker News Reader

Japan needs to release 1M tonnes of water from Fukushima nuclear plant

abc.net.au

10 pointsadrian_mrd17 comments

Inventory and distribution of tritium in the oceans in 2016: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...

  [The total Tritium in the oceans] is determined equal to 26.8 ± 14 kg including 3.8 kg of cosmogenic tritium. That is in agreement with the total atmospheric input of tritium from nuclear bomb tests and the natural inventory at steady-state estimated from natural production rates in the literature (27.8–29.3 kg in the Earth).

Hello, Godzilla

But But But nuclear is safe. These accidents that keep happening are because it's an old design with 98 rubber hulls. This new design with 99 rubber hulls will prevent every foreseeable accident that can possibly happen! Coal is more radioactive than cutting-edge nuclear according to this one report from 1974!

Oh, the entirety of europe is afraid of being irradiated because some lunatic decided to purposely make a plant in Ukraine blow up? A tsunami you say? A hijacked 747 plunging into the reactor? Coal is more radioactive than nuclear!

Did you read the article?

It's like banana-tier level radioactive water that are going to release.

Banana don't have tritium in them. It's not a relevant comparison. Also, tritium doesn't penetrate the skin but can cause trouble when it binds in food nutrients and is absorbed through digestion. It will get in fish and people will eat that. This is not the first release TEPCO is doing and it won't be the last one. They lied so many times in the past that I don't trust them at all. All these little issues, they might compound you know...

This is a great point. The mantra "dilution is the solution to pollution" can be undone by bioaccumulation in fish at the top of their food chains.

Tritium cannot bio-accumulate, because it is just hydrogen. In all chemical reactions tritium behaves identically with regular hydrogen.

Sorry for the confusion, but I am not saying

>Tritium cannot bio-accumulate

I'm simply agreeing that if it is possible, then the justification for release is invalidated. If you would like to argue your point with the commenter I replied to, you are welcome to do that.

I was refering to organically bound tritium (to food). This one takes longer to evacuate and can decay inside the body.

> In all chemical reactions tritium behaves identically with regular hydrogen.

False. For example there is a an increases the strength of water's hydrogen–oxygen bonds. Tritium acts similarly to Protium, however it has chemical differences (ignoring the radioactivity).

Even Deuterium has enough chemical difference to be poisonous in large quantities, even though it is not radioactive. Wikipedia: “When a large fraction of water (> 50%) in higher organisms is replaced by heavy water, the result is cell dysfunction and death.”

Tritiated water can be absorbed through the skin and it's also quickly flushed out with other water regardless of how it gets in your system. If i had to eat some activity of either 40K or 3H i would definitely take the tritium.

You'll be lucky if you can choose your own poison. It won't be the case for animals and people who might be affected by the shortcoming of nuclear power industry.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

(I always get the DVs for doing this, but somehow, dang always receives applause for doing the same exact thing.)

Cool. And Coal plant exhaust is like downtown-chicago-tier air. almost like I'm purposely comparing something noted in the article, to the coal thing I compared it to. wonder why one would do that.

now, to be clear, the radioactive meltdown part of the nuclear plant, I was not comparing to the coal exhaust. just the water part was compared to the coal exhaust. the meltdown part making an area uninhabitable for ten thousand years, that doesn't have a thing for comparison. that's just a bonus that stands on its own.

now - did you read my comment, like I read the article, before replying to the comment to which you replied? confused? you should be. so long, and thanks for all the fish.

queue the nuclear heads rushing to write you a text book length pro nuclear apologia

But but but cranes are safe. That crane that collapsed in lower Manhattan [1] had only 98 rubber hulls. All new cranes have 99 rubber hulls.

Haha, just kidding. We need to ban all cranes.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qoUjMBbbhQ

Not agreeing with OP, but a bad nuclear accident renders a sizeable area uninhabitable for hundreds of years.

A bad crane accident is cleaned up in months.

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