This is a non issue. The ALPS water has been treated for every radio isotope except for tiritum, which is harmless. The release of this water will be a great case study for studying pacific ocean currents and that's about it.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
28 points (93.8% liked)
World News
32160 readers
828 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Could you source another article? Better to be backed with sources when disproving political claims on news websites.
So why is China so irked then?
Because that's what they do. Find any reason to feel slighted by 'the other countries' so they can hold it against them.
Why bring China here? This has been contentious for years and across many groups, both locals (e.g. japanese fishermen) and foreign (I don't see what gives China precedence over these concerns than any of these groups).
Though I'm no more of a nuclear waste expert than the next shitposter here, last I checked, the amount of radiation was well within safe levels (otherwise this option wouldn't be on the table), water is damn good at shielding against the effects of radiation (hence why almost all the fissile fuel is stored in some form of pool or another), and the active radioisotopes had a very short half-life (meaning that whatever impact it might still have today, it will be marginal a decade from now).
If that holds up against fact checking and scientific evidence, then by all means!
Can't wait for it to be released, everything ends up fine, people forget about it, and then we go through the same hysteria in a few decades next time there's an accident.
I remember this being talked about and China opposing to it 2 years ago when Japan first announced the decision.
It should be noted as in the linked report, that Japan is adhering to UN regulations and diluting the waste water to levels lower than the IAEA standard before dumping it into the ocean. So before people rush to criticize, they maybe should also look into the regulations from IAEA and the dilution process before making an opinion. There was also concern for pollutants other than tritium which could be in the waste water that were not accounted for, but I haven't seen any media reporting on that during these two years, so while I'd love to see a report, you can make of it what you will.
As for China, they really should take a good look at themselves in the mirror, bc as per their own official report from 2017, their own upper limit of acceptable tritium levels for nuclear waste water is 225 TBq per year, which is 10x more than Japan's standard.
Wasn't saying other ones are good, just that this one is bad.