this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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No detectable amount of tritium has been found in fish samples taken from waters near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, where the discharge of treated radioactive water into the sea began a month ago, the government said Monday.

Tritium was not detected in the latest sample of two olive flounders caught Sunday, the Fisheries Agency said on its website. The agency has provided almost daily updates since the start of the water release, in a bid to dispel harmful rumors both domestically and internationally about its environmental impact.

The results of the first collected samples were published Aug. 9, before the discharge of treated water from the complex commenced on Aug. 24. The water had been used to cool melted nuclear fuel at the plant but has undergone a treatment process that removes most radionuclides except tritium.

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[–] Turkey_Titty_city@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

ignorance and paranoia about radioactivity go hand in hand.

i know so many otherwise smart people who lose it on this issue. because they just think any radioactivity = destroy planet forever . completely ignorant to how it actually works, and just think every power plant must eventually chernobyl and that one barrel of nuclear waste is enough to destroy 1000s of miles or something equally absurd.

totally sad.

[–] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yet one litre of oil can contaminate over a million litres of water.

I talked about how water released are usually modeled and risk assessments done in another comment abour the pending release a few weeks ago but I can't find it.

While I can't speak for all regulatory bodies, and you could be a shitass and release toxic crap without doing a risk assesmsent, it's very unlikely that this is the case here, particularly because it's TREATED water that's being released. That means they have a treatment system (there's a fucking rabbit hole and half...) which they are using to treat the water to some acceptable criteria/standard. This mean some sort of modeling and risk calculation has been done otherwise they would have just gone 'yolo pump the water into the ocean'.

[–] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago

Tritium isn't toxic, it's mildly radioactive.

[–] Hyggyldy@sffa.community 1 points 1 year ago

Dangit, now how am I gonna get my piscine superpowers/fish shaped tumors?

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sample size: 64

Also, are there other things like Caesium-137 that pose a risk?

[–] nothacking@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 months ago

All that other stuff was filtered out, but the tritium is near impossible to separate, because it is chemically identical to the hydrogen in normal water.

As for caesium, there are still detectable amounts of Cs-137 in most of the word from the thousands of atomic bomb tests. It's half life is just 30 years, but it will still be detectable for a hundred years or so because of the huge amount we released.

[–] Canadian_Cabinet@lemmy.ca -1 points 1 year ago

Not really. This video by Kyle Hill does an amazing job at explaining it.

[–] mufasio@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ll trust the nuclear scientists that say that the release is safe, but there should be a transparent international panel, including China which has concerns about the release into fishing waters, that is given access to conduct their own tests with all parties agreeing to release their findings.

[–] Turkey_Titty_city@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

china is causing a fuss for political gain. a huge chunk of their fishing practices are illegal and violates international law anyway. their concern is theatrics to drum up their anti-japanese nationalism.

[–] hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I remember commenting on a post where China condemned Japan for doing this.

I asked ppl there "is this actually bad or is this kind of par for the course of getting rid of the dangers left behind in Fukushima?" And most of them were like "it's not a common occurrence but it's not inherently dangerous and it's not that big of a deal"

To me it looks like the vast majority of objections to this came from strategic propaganda related to domestic relations of China and/or other nations.

[–] Unaware7013@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Its also classic anti-nuclear power FUD.

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't doubt nuclear power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let's not take the planet with us.

[–] osarusan@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This here is also classic anti-nuclear power FUD.

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This here is capitolist FUD, but I'm sure in all your great wisdom think humans can be trusted not to fuck up a 5th time.

[–] roboticide@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's nothing more capitalist than pushing coal and oil.

And any rational green energy advocate knows it'll take us decades to build enough solar/wind to fill the fossil fuels gap, but would only take us a couple years to fill that demand with nuclear and also produce fewer emissions. That's simple numbers.

So are you just irrational or a coal-snorting capitalist yourself?

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago

Show me this "fossil fuel gap" when it takes a decade for a nuclear power plant to run at full efficiency.

[–] halfempty@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sample size is critical to get a realistic result of the tritium toxicity. In this case, they sampled only 64 fish! That would not yield a statistically significant result!

[–] osarusan@kbin.social -1 points 1 year ago

Samples of local fish have been collected at two points within a 5-km radius of the discharge outlet, except during rough weather conditions, with the agency announcing its analysis results on an almost daily basis since Aug. 26.

No tritium was detected in 64 fish, which included flounder and six other species, collected since Aug. 8.

I mean... you could have read the article.

[–] nothacking@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

A banana naturally has has around 15 Bq of potassium 40. Assuming a volume of 100 mL, mashed bananas have around 400 Bq/L.

Currently, the treated water has around 250 Bq/L, around a fifth of mashed bananas. In other words, a banana smoothie could easily be more radioactive then the water as it was released.

The banana's potassium 40 has a half life of more then a billion years, so it's not going anywhere, unlike the tritium who's amount will half every 11 years. Also, potassium is concentrated by many plants and animals, while tritium is not.

[–] Kahlenar@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] toolCHAINZ@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

The power of the sun..... in the palm of my hand

[–] Scrof@sopuli.xyz -1 points 1 year ago

Unsurprising.