Japan’s fisheries agency said on Saturday fish tested in waters around the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant did not contain detectable levels of the radioactive isotope tritium, Kyodo news service reported.
Japan’s fisheries agency said on Saturday fish tested in waters around the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant did not contain detectable levels of the radioactive isotope tritium, Kyodo news service reported.
Maybe this one act considered independently isn’t that bad. What I don’t like is the “dilution is the solution to pollution” attitude that comes from acceptance of this type of activity.
For tritiated water, it largely is. For other bioaccumulative radio-isotopes it’s not. There’s still potential for concerns. But I think this release is good.
Agreed. Sometimes dilution is the solution.
But, I wouldn’t say this is “good”. I’d rather it not be necessary, but it is, and the relative amount of badness is basically nil.
All radioactive elements decay. Tritium has a half life of about 12½ years and it turns into ordinary hydrogen. If they keep releasing tritium at the same rate for a long time, it will reach a maximum concentration in about 25 years (or maybe less, depending on how accurate my fuzzy math is). Once it reaches that point, it will decay as fast as it’s released.
It’s also worth noting that if they want to release the tritium at a constant rate, they’ll have to gradually increase the rate at which they release the contaminated water, because the tritium is already decaying in storage.