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No tritium found in fish one month after Fukushima water release (www.japantimes.co.jp)

submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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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 123 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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 27 points 1 year ago

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 6 points 1 year ago

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

[-] roguetrick@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Tritated water is toxic just like heavy water. You'd just have to drink a truly ridiculous amount for it to be toxic, to the point that the radiation is a much bigger problem than the toxicity.

Edit: fully tritated water is actually worse, now that I think about it. The radioactive decay will periodically knock off a hydrogen atom, which makes it very reactive. That's not what this is though.

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[-] roguetrick@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think most reasonable objections to this were that they would be unable to filter out the actual bioaccumulating radioisotopes from the water and it should've been kept in retention. In the end you either trust they will or not. I trust they will.

[-] solidgrue@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Water eats beta- and even alpha particles in a small radius. Ionized water even more so.

The sea is vast. A pond is but a drop to the sea.

It wasn't a decision to be taken lightly, but it was a good gamble.

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[-] marine_mustang@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

I don’t understand why people think concentrating it and keeping large quantities on-site is preferable to heavily diluting and releasing it. A giant vat of radioactive water sounds like another disaster waiting to happen.

[-] roguetrick@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because they don't believe that they've removed the heavy metals that end up in the food web and sitting in the littoral area seabed until it's picked up by lifeforms again. Tritium dilutes, but fission products do not.

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[-] hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works 74 points 1 year ago

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 53 points 1 year ago

Its also classic anti-nuclear power FUD.

[-] blindbunny@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

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 21 points 1 year ago

This here is also classic anti-nuclear power FUD.

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[-] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

This is the most ridiculous argument I've ever seen against nuclear energy. "Sure it works, but people are evil!"

I can apply that to everything. Communism? I don't doubt it works, but humans build and also destroy.

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[-] set_secret@lemmy.world 50 points 1 year ago

they did however find an absolute fuck tonne of microplastics.

[-] roguetrick@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If their reporting of the quantity of tritium is accurate, India's candu style plants release more incidentally than this will.

[-] chaogomu@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago

Which is what the experts have been saying since the beginning, but the anti-nuclear propagandists explicitly ignore the experts.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 year ago

Probably because the octopuses used it all for their science experiments. It's a scientific fact that octopuses hoard tritium. Source: Spider-man 2.

[-] Kahlenar@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Precious tritium

[-] toolCHAINZ@infosec.pub 18 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Hyggyldy@sffa.community 13 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] remotelove@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 year ago

Sample size: 64

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

[-] Canadian_Cabinet@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] mjq07@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Cs-137 and other fission and activation products can be largely removed by treatment. H-3 is a bit trickier since it literally is part of the water. Luckily it's a fairly weak beta emitter with a relatively short half life so causes very, very little long term harm.

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[-] ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 year ago

The ocean is 1.335 × 10^21 litres. That number is stupid big. There are 7.5 × 10^18 grains of sand on Earth. If every person in Japan flushed a litre of the reactor water down their toilet, it would be diluted to nothing in no time at all.

[-] FrostbyteIX@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I for one would like to try this "nuclear fish"......preferably crumbed, deep fried and doused in lemon juice. With a serve of fries.

[-] zephyreks@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

People have been far more concerned about the efficacy of the ALPS system at extracting other contaminants than they are about tritium contamination. The ALPS system is unproven and the wastewater they're releasing would be pretty toxic as far as other radioactive isotopes is concerned if the ALPS system isn't doing it's job perfectly.

[-] Orionza@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I like this but would rather see a multi country coordinated oceanic study. We're all in this together.

[-] halfempty@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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 38 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.

[-] voiceofchris@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I mean, you are correct, it was not two fish. But is 64 fish some sort of good sample size?
Follow up question: does this type of thing accumulate in small fish and then concentrate in larger and larger fish?

[-] sethboy66@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

I mean, you are correct, it was not two fish. But is 64 fish some sort of good sample size?

Given the results, it is significant.

Follow up question: does this type of thing accumulate in small fish and then concentrate in larger and larger fish?

No, tritium is treated by organisms just like normal H2O, bioaccumulation is no problem.

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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023

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