It's not like the scientific community isn't divided on the release of the wastewater, just that the release of tritium is probably not the biggest concern.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/24/1195419846/fukushima-radioactive-water-japan
There's still concern about the custom-designed ALPS system and the trace contaminants it may leave, which WILL bioaccumulate. Plus, Tepco hasn't really been known for, y'know, prioritizing health and safety over profit.
Honestly, I wouldn’t trust anything TEPCO says further than I can collectively throw the entire company when it comes to health and safety.
New on this planet? When was the last time any political decision was based on science?
Sorry for the shitpost, I missed my train and now I'm a little bored 🤫
Seriously, I was about to say that tracks with politicians everywhere, from the ones dealing with climate change in the US to the ones trying to undo encryption in Europe. I'd be more surprised if politicians ever did base their decisions on science.
If it will protect the fish from overfishing and isn't that radioactive, this is a net positive :)
The government said they will pay for unsold fish so I doubt it.... Its probably just going to go to waste.
UK consumers are always welcome to import seafood from those waters
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Japan has called on China to remove a total ban on its seafood products, imposed after Tokyo began the scientifically-endorsed release of treated water from its Fukushima nuclear plant.
China, the leading buyer of Japan's fish, announced on Thursday it was making the order due to concerns for consumers' health.
Locals consume most of the catch, so top seafood companies Nissui and Maruha Nichiro have both said they expect limited impact from China's ban.
Experts say even people who scoff down lots of seafood will be exposed to only extremely low doses of radiation - in the range of 0.0062 to 0.032 microSv per year, said Mark Foreman, an associate professor of nuclear chemistry in Sweden.
China and its territories Hong Kong and Macau - had already instated a partial ban on seafood from some Japanese areas- but authorities now expanded that net.
Following China's announcement on Thursday, many Japanese on Twitter even celebrated the ban - wryly suggesting it could mean cheaper fish at home.
The original article contains 812 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
whats the rate of release (liters per minute or something like that)?
From what I’ve seen, two weeks in the water would be equivalent to the dose a flight attendant received in a full year, one of the highest radiation jobs out there. These fish live in that water 365 days a year though, not two weeks a year, so they’ll receive 25x that dose over the course of the year.
That's the water before it gets released into the ocean, though. That's the most concentrated it will ever be. Once it's released into the ocean it'll dilute across the whole planet and the effect will be literally unmeasurable.
It will take quite a while for it to be diluted across the whole world, and in the meantime, those fish and animals living near the release zone will be receiving said doses, making it a perfectly reasonable stance to refuse to buy Japanese fish until we have some more hard data.
in the meantime, those fish and animals living near the release zone will be receiving said doses
No, the dilution begins immediately upon putting it in the water.
If the current dilution gives a flight attendant year equivalent dose in two weeks, then diluting it in 26 times the starting amount of water makes it exactly the same as the fish having a job as a flight attendant. How quickly do you think a liter of water spreads out into 26 liters of water when you dump it in the ocean?
This radiation panic is utterly silly. It has no scientific merit whatsoever.
So if I understand you right, you’re saying that the dilution will be so quick that there will be no area immediately around the dumping zone with raised radiation levels? When I pour colored water into a bowl of regular water, the force of the water rushing in pushes the regular water out of the way, and the colored water stays mostly with its own kind, until it slowly spreads out to color the entire bowl of water. This would be different?
I kinda feel like people don’t understand how really, really big the ocean is.
Or that there are things like waves and currents in the ocean that help keep it mixed.
I kinda feel like the size of the full ocean isn’t relevant to the effects of acute radiation exposure to the fish immediately in the area around the dumping zone. I’m not saying the whole ocean will be irradiated, or even the entirety of Japanese seas. But there will definitively be a section of the ocean, that, at least for the duration of the dumping of the (300 million gallons was it?) irradiated water will be exposed to significantly higher than acceptable amounts of radiation.
What I’m trying to figure out is not if this zone will exist, it will, period. What I’m trying to figure out is how big will that zone be, and will iT persist after dumping has completed? It could be just the 30ft immediately surrounding the outlet, or it could be 30mi, but I can’t seem to find any estimates, everyone is using the whole ocean as their metric, when I’m talking about the immediate area around the dumping area.
According to this article it's 8 million gallons in total. That would fill a cube 31.5 meters on each side.
The water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organization drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre. That's before it's diluted. So you could drink it straight from the tap, before it goes into the ocean at all, and you still won't be exposed to higher amounts of radiation than is considered "acceptable."
Since dumping it into the ocean isn't going to make it more concentrated, the area of ocean water that will contain higher than acceptable amounts of radiation is exactly zero.
This whole thing is nothing but wild hysteria.
Thank you. I appreciate the response and data. I wonder what the difference in the WHO limit would be if, instead of being for drinking water, which enters and leaves your body the same day, it was for people to live 24/7 in a pool of water, as fish do. I imagine it would be a significantly lower number, but you’ve still done a lot to convince me this is safer than it sounds. Cheers!
Even if living in it 24/7 sucks for the fish, the exposure for a human that eats the fish is still transient - the tritium in the fish enters and leaves much like the water you'd drink does.
Glad to be providing helpful information. It's easy for fears to magnify and spread, humans have a bias towards paying attention to danger because that's really helpful in evolutionary terms when there could be a hungry leopard hiding in any bush.
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