What options does Japan have for releasing radioactive wastewater? Is diluting it and releasing into the Pacific ocean the best option?
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They could expand the waste water tank complex and keep storing them.
They chose not to because of budget and political reasons.
It’s still debatable if the wastewater is safe enough. US and Japan largely confident that it’s harmless, anyone else in Asia is very doubtful.
Edit:
To elaborate a little, the water that will be released are supposed to be quite safe. They will filter everything other than tritium and carbon isotope. And water it down further to make it harmless.
Problem is that you have to take word from them and just trust their publication.
I believe it will be harmless in the end because there was third party involved in investigations. But at the same time, Japanese government is not very good at transparency and has bad track record of tucking issues away under the rug.
So the skepticism goes down to three main reason:
1. Trust issue on Japanese gov
2. Irrational fear on nuclear thing
3. Politically motivated nationalism
Third is very popular strategy in Asian populist politicians.
All in all, I believe discharging the water will be harmless IF they do it the way they said they will, and I don’t know if it’s the best way but it’s certainly good enough way.
Hey, check how much tritium France release from their reprocessing plant. Fukushima is less of a problem actually.
They could keep storing it, or they could release it into the ocean.
The radioactive water in question is water containing tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen (i.e. HTO instead of H2O). Tritium is a bit different from the typical radioisotopes you get from nuclear in that its relatively short lived and doesn’t really bioaccumulate. Tritiated water is chemically the same as regular water so there is no toxicity, especially at dilute concentrations. Tritium naturally exists in water at low levels, so if you find a big enough source of water (the ocean) the resulting dilution should essentially be negligible in terms of radiation. The ocean is already very slightly radioactive in part due to tritium from rainwater and radiation from space. Also since tritium is short lived with a half life of 12 years so it would not stay in the ocean forever. In general ocean disposal of any waste is bad, but tritium is an interesting case where it is probably the best disposal method.
Most of the hype around japans tritium release has been bad journalism and blatant fear mongering. However there is some concern that the water may have other contaminants. If that is the case it might change things but assuming its just tritium then the risk/exposure is fairly negligible.
There’s no need for any other options because the water us perfectly safe. It’s quite literally safer to drink than the ocean water it’s being diluted with. People just have a completely irrational fear of anything nuclear. The irony being that this irrational fear has likely killed millions in pollution and global warming.
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