Japan has been given the okay by UN to dump radioactive waste water into the ocean, but nearby countries are protesting that its unsafe. Is it unsafe? Is it safe?
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Firstly, the amount of water being drained into the ocean per year has the same amount of Tritium (22TBq) as the amount of Tritium that was being added when the plant was operating. (Of note, the two countries complaining about this (China and South Korea) add 52TBq (Fuqing plant in China) and 50TBq (Kori plant in South Korea) annually), which is well within the limits deemed safe. For comparison, the UK Heysham nuclear power plant releases 1,300TBq of Tritium annually, and has been doing so for the last 40 years.
Secondly, for 12.7 years (incidentally, the half-life of Tritium is 12.3 years, which also reduced the amount of Tritium by half), the water has been ‘cleaned’ of actual dangerous isotopes, such as Strontium-90 and Cesium-137, and what will be released is only Tritium. You might ask why they cannot strain the Tritium out as well using the ALPS system, and that is because Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, and is too small to be filtered by that system. In truth, there may be some isotopes of helium there as well, but anything larger is large enough to be caught by the filtering.
Another interesting fact is that our own atmosphere generates Tritium to the amount of 50,000 to 70,000 TBq annually, which dwarfs the 22TBq being released into the ocean.
Thirdly, the Pacific Ocean is already radioactive, and not just due to the atomic tests in the 1950s. The Pacific contains ~3,000,000TBq of Tritium on its own, and that’s not even the highest amount of isotopes in there, with a potassium isotope reaching 7,400,000,000TBq (the potassium is a result of the seaweed).
You might be wondering what I mean by TBq. That stands for tera becquerel. A becquerel is a unit of measurement for radioactivity, and I used tera because it made more sense to use tera than anything else based of the amount released at Fukushima. If you want to know what the actual amount is, the amount to be released annually is 22,000,000,000,000 Becquerel, which seems like a lot, but which ends up being around 0.06g. This is in comparison to the naturally occurring Tritium being generated annually, which is around 150 to 200g.
As for, ‘is it safe?’, yes. I would have no concerns about swimming in that area.
The amount of radioactivity being sent into the Pacific Ocean in total after they’re done (in 30 years) is literally less than a drop in a bucket, and the amount they’re sending into the ocean annually isn’t even registerable compared to what is already there, added elsewhere and created naturally. It’s kinda like that saying, “the difference between a million and a billion is around a billion.” The radioactivity of the ocean before releasing the water and after is basically no different.
Note: I am NOT suggesting that we have a free for all and dump radioactive stuff in the ocean willy-nilly. I’m simply pointing out that this instance is kind of difficult to even register as anything but a political opportunity for some countries to register complaints.
I know this isn’t exactly explaining like you’re five, but I hope it is still very understandable and interesting.
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