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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It’s a lot of water with a little radiation in the grand scheme of things. It is also mostly tritium (literally activated hydrogen as a part of water), a low level beta emitter with a half life of 12 years roughly. Furthermore it has a biological half life much less, because you expel and replace water. Any ingested or absorbed tritium is gone after like 12-60 days. The levels are below what we consider to cause a measurable impact, although we recognize the impact is not zero. I would say any number of plants or factories along that coast have done more environmental harm in the past year than this will do. Like a toilet paper factories allowable monthly emissions are probably projected to cause more harm overall to the environment. Radioactive releases due to man made commercial radiation are kept at like 1/1000000 of what is considered needed to cause measurable harm. This release would be above that, but below what a sewage plant or coal plant is allowed to release yearly (as they are not considered making the radiation, just concentrating it…).
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