Good, it’s about time. Tritiated water just isn’t dangerous. The ocean naturally contains billions of tons of URANIUM. A few kilograms of short lived tritium isn’t going to matter at all.
Finally someone who understands it’s not as scary as news want it to sound like.
Wait I get that the ocean is gigantic but billions of tons?
Yep. Best estimate I have seen is 4.5 billion tons of uranium. Course, most of the natural radioactivity of our ocean is from potassium, actually. But either way, natural levels of radioactivity will not change.
4 billion tons at 3 ppb… It’s so much water, don’t try to drink it either.
For anyone curious:
From Wikipedia:
The total mass of Earth’s hydrosphere is about 1.4 × 10^18 tonnes, which is about 0.023% of Earth’s total mass.
Better yet, the water they’re releasing has less tritium in it than average ocean water, so releasing it will actually be an improvement for the ocean (190 vs avg of 500 of some unit)
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It’s not that the impact will be minimal, it is that it will not be present. It’s not that it’s possible that the release will be harmless. It’s a fact that it will be harmless. China and Korea are “raising concerns” because if they can economically punish the Japanese for being monsters during WW2 and the Japanese occupation of Korea, they will. And they’ll do that whether the water is properly released now or if we futz about for ten more years and THEN release it.
This is what I’ve heard too. It’s really no big deal. Concerned local fishermen are probably just not introduced to the physics of this. In general, humans tend to worry a bit more about radioactivity than necessary. This in particular will be diluted into basically nothing. The only real problem is the PR work that lies ahead for them. In practice, their people should probably be more concerned about constantly dying early from pollution and protest more about that.
People really need to educate themselves before protesting. There’s plenty of actually bad shit to protest, like South Korea’s ridiculous work ethics.
Don’t even have to look so far. Japan’s work ethic is awful, suicide rates are high and because of this the birth rate is declining.
I was very suspicious on China’s remarks as they have a track record of doing PR for themselves and no one else.
Or in terms of actual nuclear containment issues:
We really need to clean it up properly, not to mention take care of the people impacted by it’s creation.
Though with the Tomb, this passage from Wikipedia should be kept in mind:
However, the soil around the dome was found to be more contaminated than its contents, so a breach could not increase the radiation levels by any means. Because the cleaning operation in the 1970s only removed an estimated 0.8 percent of the total transuranic waste in the Enewetak atoll, the soil and the lagoon water surrounding the structure now contain a higher level of radioactivity than the debris of the dome itself, so even in the event of a total collapse, the radiation dose delivered to the local resident population or marine environment should not change significantly.
This only makes the whole thing more fucked up, but at least the tomb itself isn’t quite as bad as it sounded when I started reading up about it. By virtue of everything else being much worse. Fuck. I think that’s enough internet for today. :'(
If you wantwd to do some further watching on the subject, here’s a great video on the Marshall Islands and their current state of affairs in regards to the Tomb and climate change
linky link to an ABC News video
Just a warning though, it’s a pretty frustrating and depressing situation.
Also the video is like 40 minutes long.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/autMHvj3exA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Don’t tell the people fighting this about coal power plants and other things that actually fuck the environment and kill us.
It’ll be fine. Like, virtually harmless, kinda fine.
I’ll take 5 litres please, how much?
When you’re so salty that you drink sea water!
This news article doesn’t have the dates announced, but bloomberg does.
I didn’t want to post something with a paywall.
Update: I have now learned about archiving, the correct article is posted
I plan to release water as soon as I’m done drinking this beverage.
Do you drink sea water? Do you drink your shower or toilet water? Or the water you use for cleaning?
I wouldn’t.
I’m definitely getting an “opening scene from a Godzilla movie” vibes from this story.
Sadly for your version but very good for the actual release, the radioactivity of this is so incredibly irrelevant compared to the freaking oceans, Godzilla would be completely unable to even realize someone had done this.
I’d still watch that movie. Start off by tuning in to the headlines from Exposition News Network to set up the plot, follow with ominous music while workers do industrial things in the rain. When the time is right, release valves open and alarm bells start ringing. Water floods out and mixes into the ocean where it (and the camera view) are swept away by powerful underwater currents.
Cut to an anonymous island in the Pacific where a dragonfly is zipping around doing dragonfly stuff. Give it a little more screentime and then a lizard explodes into the frame to snatch it out of the air. After its hard-earned meal, the lizard heads down to the waterline to swim/drink/scope out some hot single lizard babes in their area or whatever they do. Ominous music returns in time for the fed and hydrated lizard to sneak off for a nap.
The rest of the movie is just a wordless lizard documentary where we follow it around through a few days in its perfectly ordinary life.
