Friday 16 October 2020

Radioactive Seawater Release?

I naturally tend to support locals when faced with the activities of large corporations. For once, however, I sympathise with the industrialists trying to deal with the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/16/japan-to-release-1m-tonnes-of-contaminated-fukushima-water-into-the-sea). The rights and wrongs of siting the power station in its coastal location is certainly an issue but the complex is, unfortunately, where it is. The plant was destroyed by a tsunami in March 2011 and seawater has had to be used to cool the damaged reactors to prevent a disaster. Since that time, almost 1.25m tonnes of contaminated seawater has been stored, in more than 1000 tanks, on site. Storage capacity will run out in 2022, although the reactors will still need to be cooled with seawater. The treatment of the seawater reportedly removes any uranium but low concentrations of tritium (an isotope of hydrogen much used as a tracer in medicine) remain. The people running the nuclear reactor hope to start to discharge the contaminated seawater into the surrounding ocean. This is said to be scientifically safe, as humans can only be damaged by tritium, when it is at much higher concentartions (it would also be rapidly further diluted in the sea). Unremarkably (given a fear of radiation), this is being resisted by local fishermen who feel that it will further damage their industry (fish from that locality is currently banned by some neighbouring countries). One can understand their concerns but carefully-regulated discharge does seem to be the least worse option in the present circumstances.

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