• Cleverdawny@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    58
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Good, it’s about time. Tritiated water just isn’t dangerous. The ocean naturally contains billions of tons of URANIUM. A few kilograms of short lived tritium isn’t going to matter at all.

    • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Finally someone who understands it’s not as scary as news want it to sound like.

      • Cleverdawny@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yep. Best estimate I have seen is 4.5 billion tons of uranium. Course, most of the natural radioactivity of our ocean is from potassium, actually. But either way, natural levels of radioactivity will not change.

      • Slice@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        4 billion tons at 3 ppb… It’s so much water, don’t try to drink it either.

        • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          For anyone curious:

          From Wikipedia:

          The total mass of Earth’s hydrosphere is about 1.4 × 10^18 tonnes, which is about 0.023% of Earth’s total mass.

    • finestnothing@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Better yet, the water they’re releasing has less tritium in it than average ocean water, so releasing it will actually be an improvement for the ocean (190 vs avg of 500 of some unit)

    • jugalator@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      This is what I’ve heard too. It’s really no big deal. Concerned local fishermen are probably just not introduced to the physics of this. In general, humans tend to worry a bit more about radioactivity than necessary. This in particular will be diluted into basically nothing. The only real problem is the PR work that lies ahead for them. In practice, their people should probably be more concerned about constantly dying early from pollution and protest more about that.

      • Cleverdawny@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s not that the impact will be minimal, it is that it will not be present. It’s not that it’s possible that the release will be harmless. It’s a fact that it will be harmless. China and Korea are “raising concerns” because if they can economically punish the Japanese for being monsters during WW2 and the Japanese occupation of Korea, they will. And they’ll do that whether the water is properly released now or if we futz about for ten more years and THEN release it.