Fukushima plant set to release radioactive material into ocean

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: burdman30ott6

I fish off the Oregon coast.

I used to fish off the Oregon coast.

I'm in CA and am increasingly nervous of the fish we get, mostly from Alaska. The water in the northern Pacific seems as polluted as ever with nuclear runoff.

A tragedy.

Fukushima is pumping radioactive material in the form of particles, probably clumps and chunks as well, into the Pacific Ocean. They can't go in and "clean up" the big chunks and now globs of melted core, so they pump ocean water on it to keep it cooled off, then pump it out to the ocean again.

Why can't these particles be filtered out or concentrated by evaporation? The water would have been radiated, but the radioactive particles would be cleaned out before pumping it back into the ocean, wouldn't it?

Doesn't sand filter out particulates in filters? How are even the fine particles getting through the soil into the ground water? Won't the particles settle down in the ocean, get deposited and then covered up by silt, sand and other material making it a localized pollutant?

I thought that water doesn't retain any radiation after being exposed to it, that the problem is the radioactive particles and pieces of core material that apparently must be floating around in the water being dumped on it and allowed to flow where it may.

Bio-accumulation could be to blame more than dispersal, if not then how can these particles can travel so far?

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to downplay what I consider the worse man-made disaster that will never stop poisoning the planet in any reasonable time frame.

They shouldn't be allowed to make that decision. Coming from the country that developed the Kyoto protocol.. I'm sure many Japanese are not happy with that either. A poor decision and lack of discipline by the Japanese government.

Btw this is a world problem and not just a Japan problem. They see the dumping as throwing contamination into your backyard swimming pool. Problem is....the whole world uses this swimming pool.

This catastrophe will be worse than ISIS and no one does a thing to stop Japan from doing this.

Has everyone already forgotten the thousand plus nuclear bombs that have been detonated on earth including the Pacific ocean? Don't forget the lost nuclear submarines with their warheads and reactors sitting at the bottom of the ocean. All of which continue to react with the environment.

In my opinion as far as nuclear pollution on a scale of 1 - 10 Fukushima doesn't even break a 5.

a reply to: burdman30ott6


I saw this, this morning. We probably won't see this on the news, instead the MSM will cover some "other topic which I won't mention".

This is a really bad idea. I hope people in Japan are informed about this so they can protest against this plan. This would affect the Pacific ocean more than it already has affected it. Not to mention the fact that this will eventually reach island in the Pacific, and the west coast of the U.S.

This is a crime against humanity!!!! There must be some international petition against this. These people are absolutely insane. Why not bury it in a barren desert somewhere? Oh right, that would cost too much time and money. Might as well just pollute the entire ocean and put the planet in even further risk...

a reply to: burdman30ott6

Honestly, Japan needs some serious GLOBAL pressure... example, you let 3rd party researchers come in to evaluate and determine if what you say is true, or we declare war on you IMMEDIATELY for poisoning a major resource the whole world depends on, EARTH... Living on the west coast (seattle), this makes me boil up..#Tepco and# these prideful #....


Mod Note: Do Not Evade the Automatic Censors

a reply to: Grimpachi

I mentioned that on page 2, thing is this just adds to, continues to add to every minute, for how long. A bomb is boom and its done of course the radioactivity remains but it does get added to. Maybe the planet can absorb it, maybe it can't, I guess the upside is the Japanese can have a nice romantic sushi dinner by the glow of the yellowtail and squid.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

So - what? They're just posting the truth now instead of the cover-ups?

The ocean is in it's death throws.

This will only be the nightcap before the final breath is expelled.

originally posted by: jhn7537
a reply to: burdman30ott6

Honestly, Japan needs some serious GLOBAL pressure... example, you let 3rd party researchers come in to evaluate and determine if what you say is true, or we declare war on you IMMEDIATELY for poisoning a major resource the whole world depends on, EARTH... Living on the west coast (seattle), this makes me boil up... f*** Tepco and f*** these prideful c*nts....

War isn't going to help = loss of money and resources when the waters are already dead.

As for letting 'others' in there to 'clean things up'?

Really?

You really think if some other country could 'clean this up' - Japan wouldn't already have them 'doing it?'

Yeah, don't everthink this one.

We're doomed.

a reply to: seeker1963sorry you might not make your goalwww.soylent.com...

originally posted by: putnam6
a reply to: Grimpachi

I mentioned that on page 2, thing is this just adds to, continues to add to every minute, for how long. A bomb is boom and its done of course the radioactivity remains but it does get added to. Maybe the planet can absorb it, maybe it can't, I guess the upside is the Japanese can have a nice romantic sushi dinner by the glow of the yellowtail and squid.

It seems you have some sort of misconception.

You think the bombs are done once they explode, wrong the explosion spread the material out and continue to react with the enviroment. Of course the radioactivity. Hey, that's the same thing Fukushima is dangerous for.

I don't mean to bring down the doom parade here,and Ive been one of the most vocal people about how serious Fukushima actually is, and how it boggles my mind that we dont have a massive international effort to fix this goddamn thing already...

BUT...


The water stored in the huge tanks is contaminated with Tritium. Tritium has a half life of 12years, more than 6 has passed, but I'm not sure if fresh tritium is being created in the basements of the reactor buildings. They pump as much water out of those basements as they can each day and literally have an assembly line welding up new tanks every day ON SITE. They also have a Tritium scrubbing system which I believe has broken down several times, but is at least removing as much contamination as they can from the water in the tanks.


Ultimately, it still sucks, but it's probably not super bad if they can take the water many miles offshore and release it there because yes, the ocean truly is so ridiculously enormous that it will be diluted to basically nothing. Caesium is the really bad stuff, and still Fukushima has put less of that into the Pacific than our 1950's-1960's nuclear testing did.


The internal status of things at Fukushima is still much more concerning than the tritium water release.

Like exactly where is the corium???? And when can we expect new radioactive materials to stop being produced...

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: TheRedneck

I understand what you're saying and, as an engineer, I can't find logical fault in it. That said, if you cut your finger and get an infection, you care for it even more than you would if you'd never cut it and never gotten the infection. You certainly don't expose it to even minor, in comparison, bacteria because you're dealing with an already overloaded system. Fukushima is at that point. NOTHING radioactive should go in that water now.

But yeah, it's totally screwed. Those cores will be poisoning the Pacific well after our lifetimes are over.

The tritium water will do FAR MORE harm if the tanks rupture on land than if they take them out to sea, and they are diluted by the eleventy-billion-squillion gallons in the ocean.


The real problem at Fukushima is the basements are ruptured and groundwater leaks INTO and OUT OF the the basements as it flows toward the sea down the hillside which is basically every Japanese coastline.


I don't know enough about the actual circumstances, but it seems to me an interim solution could be to just pump all of the basements full of concrete so it seals the whole situation off from the groundwater at least. HOWEVER, if the corium is still in there,and the flow of groundwater is actually keeping it cool enough to not be molten (which would be obvious with massive steam emissions from the buildings), then currently the corium is stable, and only tritium is being created.


Do you know that every nuclear power plant in the world actually has a similar situation? Spent fuel rods need to be submerged in water for DECADES otherwise they heat up by themselves so hot they will melt through the zirconium cladding. The water actually needs to be cooled and circulated, otherwise it boils off, exposing the rods to air, they melt the zirconium cladding and then basically catch fire, and burn/vaporize into the air releasing/creating HUGE amounts of nasty nasty radioactive isotopes.

Yes, almost every nuclear power plant in the world stores it's old fuel rods in pools onsite. In the 50's when we designed these things, we we're sure that in the next 10years we would come up with a genius solution to the spent fuel/nuclear waste problem. Well, it's been over 60years now, and we never figured it out. So the pools just keep getting bigger and bigger, and more cooling towers built etc.

It's an absolutely ridiculous system with zero long-term sustainability. Transporting the stuff is dangerous as hell because it must be constantly cooled, and even the stuff that's been cooled for 30-40years still needs to be sealed in a pure water container and then locked away inside a mountain somewhere where it can't accidentally be opened and exposed to the air for the next 1000years or so.

WOW. Some people really don't deserve this planet. Unfortunately, this doesn't just mess with Japans well being, but our entire planet's and human civilisation. This could have catastrophic consequences.

McCurry reports that in December, the Japanese government revised a 2013 estimate of the costs of decommissioning the plant to roughly $190 billion, double its initial estimate.

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It is clear that the Japanese gov't cannot continue doubling the costs to find the solution for very long.

Aw c'mon....they got "some" of the radioactivity out of the water. Not just all of it. Give 'em props for something. (This is written in the new sarcasm font)

And the head of the fisherman's league is just worried about appearances. Don't tell folks what's happening, just do it! Otherwise it might hurt our sales. How stupid can seafood consumers be?

On top of it, there ain't squat anybody can do. Just a giant radioactive s*** sandwich.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

And, on top of the food chain...what is it doing to the rising ocean temperatures?

originally posted by: silo13


The ocean is in it's death throws.

This will only be the nightcap before the final breath is expelled.

The West Coast has sea life dying from starfish to mammals,
Hawaii also. This is unprecedented, yet experts claim no consensus?

All logic points to Fukushima contamination....