Japan starts release of Fukushima’s treated radioactive water
aljazeera.com> Japan says all radioactive elements have been filtered out except tritium, which is hard to remove from water. The hydrogen isotope is also discharged – at higher levels – by operational nuclear power plants, including in China and France.
> That water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organization drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre, according to Tepco. A becquerel is a measure of radioactivity.
> Monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has backed the plan, will be on-site for the discharge, and samples of water and fish will be taken.
Umm, what's the controversy here?
> Umm, what's the controversy here?
Fear of radiation, fear that the Japanese government / Fukushima’s owners can’t be trusted to release only what they say they will. Personally it seems safe to me and I’m confident the IAEA’s monitoring will be effective, but then again I’m living on the other side of the planet, so …
To be fair, TEPCO is completely and absolutely untrustworthy. There is evidence of severe miss-management, as well as 2 cases where they deliberately ignored safety warning from government agencies.
As a Japanese citizen, I would feel safer seeing the TEPCO corporation dismantled, and it's leadership behind bars. But the courts declared them not guilty.
A late addition, but I should also add info about Onagawa Nuclear Powerplant. It survived the exact same disaster with no melt down, only because the manager staunchly refused to back down on constant safety training and disaster drills. Of course, to the frustration and chagrin of upper management.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20230824/k10014172021000.ht...
and also
https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi...
They seems to be more willing to put money on propaganda instead of actually dealing with the problem. Just check the page 7.
- Discharge into the sea: 3.4 billion yen
- Vapor release: 34.9 billion yen
- Hydrogen release: 100 billion yen
- Underground burial: 243.1 billion yen
And for propaganda, 70 billion yen
Japan has spent more than ¥4 trillion on the decontamination effort so far. So it's definitely not true that they have spent more on propaganda than "actually dealing with the problem".
> Total decontamination costs have exceeded 4 trillion yen as of the end of December. Going forward, additional costs are projected to grow by trillions of yen. [1]
Is ¥70 billion a lot? Sure. But to put it in perspective, more than $14 billion (¥2 trillion) was spent on federal election campaigns in the US in 2020 [2]. Gaining public favor is expensive in a democratic country. And misinformation is a real problem with real costs (e.g. to Japan’s fishing industry) - so it makes sense economically as well as politically.
[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Fukushima-Anniversary/Fuku...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United...
So people don't trust the Japanese government or TEPCO. That's fine, and that's why the IAEA is there monitoring. Don't trust the IAEA? I feel like anyone should be able to conduct independent testing on water and fish samples from the area.
> Don't trust the IAEA?
You can trust the IAEA to actually do monitoring, and also believe that monitoring might be not effective enough. The IAEA failed to effectively monitor the Iranian nuclear program for more than a decade, so why should we expect the opposite?
> I feel like anyone should be able to conduct independent testing on water and fish samples from the area.
You have to tap into the wastewater source, which is much more hard to do independently and also why the IAEA had to show up. The wastewater will then be subject to the ocean currents, so the actual effect would be inconsistent and delayed (up to 10 years, according to simulations). At that point nothing could be done about the year-long dump.
> The IAEA failed to effectively monitor the Iranian nuclear program for more than a decade,
Wwhich decade was that then (more to the point why did they fail to monitor if they were montoring?)
There's a big difference between easy monitoring of peacetime allied country nuclear reactors and monitoring the enrichment program of a country actively attempting to develp weapons grade material in the absence of any binding agreements.
> [Which] decade was that then (more to the point why did they fail to monitor if they were montoring?)
2009--2019 if my understanding is correct. Note that this period does overlap with major sanctions against Iran, and since the IAEA itself later acknowledged the breach of agreements in this period, it's fair to say that the IAEA monitoring was not as effective compared to Western intelligences.
> There's a big difference between easy monitoring of peacetime allied country nuclear reactors and monitoring the enrichment program of a country actively attempting to develp weapons grade material in the absence of any binding agreements.
This doesn't matter, because it does show that countries can hide (or more accurately, delay the detection of) evidences if they are really willing to do so. And the absence of any binding agreements actually gives Japan more incentive to do that.
> The wastewater will then be subject to the ocean currents, so the actual effect would be inconsistent and delayed (up to 10 years, according to simulations).
Do you have a source for these simulations?
Sure, see Yi Liu, et al. (2021) [1] and Kim, Kyeong Ok, et al. (2023) [2]. AFAIK they all predict a rapid initial diffusion into the Pacific ocean with a much delayed inflow back to the Korean waters among others.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nsr...
[2] https://sciwatch.kiost.ac.kr/handle/2020.kiost/43977 (no actual paper available, I inferred its details from [3])
[3] https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_internatio...
So it might take years for the treated water to reach South Korea, but in water samples taken in the vicinity of the East coast of Japan a higher than expected dose of radiation would show up almost immediately after release. And of course the concentration will always be strongest off the coast of Fukushima, so if concentrations are higher than expected off the coast of Japan, they could immediately stop releasing the treated water, and the concentration by the time it reached Korean waters would be orders of magnitude lower (note the colors on the dispersion graphs represent exponential changes in concentration) than what was detected near Fukushima.
That’s what I mean when I say anyone who really wants to can conduct their own tests and sound the alarm. Hell, if the Chinese government wants to pay me I’ll go take a boat off the coast of Fukushima and collect some water samples for them myself.
> Hell, if the Chinese government wants to pay me I’ll go take a boat off the coast of Fukushima and collect some water samples for them myself.
How can they verify whether you actually took the sample from the coast of Fukushima then or not? wink
But seriously, yes, independent groups can take and measure samples and alram in advance. Alas, many such alarms tend to be ignored. Jurisdictions matter here, and there is a reason that Japan didn't try to dump all the wastewater until South Korea (among others) somehow changed the opinion.
> How can they verify whether you actually took the sample from the coast of Fukushima then or not? wink
I’m a random person or bot on the internet and I said so, that should be all the assurance anyone needs.
> [...] fear that the Japanese government / Fukushima’s owners can’t be trusted to release only what they say they will.
Especially given the fact that Naoto Kan, the prime minister of Japan at the time of the Fukushima accident, had to go to the TEPCO HQ to force them to continue the response instead of giving up and watching a full meltdown. Japan has a lot to do in order to regain the lost trust.
Regaining trust is IMO, impossible with all current politicians.
The government has basically designated the nuclear agency seat as a "Send the guy we don't like there" seat. Only incompetent idiots have been placed there since Fukushima.
Add in all the BS red-tape that the government made up, the notoriously slow bureaucracy, and sometimes even sabotage? (Combine that with the new nuclear regulation agency created after Fukushima, which complicates it further) It's not happening without a strongman leading the charge and really forcing it.
Would be great if we could copy-paste France's setup. But Japan is obtuse and inflexible.
So sad that many Japanese saw it as a micro management and blamed him
China are making a fuss about it but it's just an excuse for geopolitics.
This was exactly what I thought when I first started hearing about this, and is even more what I think now after hearing statements from China.
China's statements are sleazy in my opinion. The way they word things makes it sound like Japan is irresponsibly doing whatever they like without oversight, and the world should be doing something about it.
None, groups like Greenpeace and various green parties throughout Europe are being China's useful idiots. Fukushima-Daishi is going to release 900 TBq in a whole ocean over multiple years, and that dose is already estimated by taking the worst numbers we could imagine.
La Hague's retreatment plant puts out 13000 TBq per year, and no one ever cared, nor did anyone see changes in the environment.
Not to mention that humans do not metabolize Tritium, it'll never stay in the human body for more than a few hours. You're more likely to die from the salt in that water than the tritium.
La Hague, not The Hague ( Dutch city )
Serves me right for wanting to properly translate my own language, forgetting some other countries have the same names. Thanks.
Pas de probleme!
The countries over there don’t like each other and are looking for any excuse to point that out
10,000 is very high and this level will be lowered hopefully in time.
In Ontario Canada:
20 Bq/L limit proposed by the Ontario Drinking Water Advisory Council (ODWAC)
190 is 10 times that limit.
This isn't only about drinking water it's about eating seafood that has absorbed these chemicals (or eaten many fish who have absorbed them). I could understand the caution around seafood in that area for a period of time.
This isn't drinking water, though. This is the concentration in water that is going to be discharged into the ocean and rapidly diluted even further (1 - 2 Bq/L within a few km of where it's being discharged, and difficult to distinguish from background levels in the ocean beyond that [1]).
And as the article notes, there are active Nuclear power plants in France and China (and South Korea [2]) that discharge even more tritium per year than is planned at Fukushima. Should people also be cautious about eating seafood from those regions as well?
[1] https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi...
[2] https://www.kns.org/files/pre_paper/17/173%EC%86%A1%EA%B7%9C...
I regret to tell you the ODWAC is made up of unqualified morons preying on your fears then.
The ocean's average radioactivity is 12Bq/L, and there's a _lot_ of water. A single banana is 20Bq already.
Dump a few million litres of 10000Bq/L water in the ocean over a few years, and the average radioactivity goes to... Still 12Bq/L
It depends on the exact elements that are causing that emission level. Heavy metals such as those present in nuclear waste tend to bio-accumulate in marine organisms, that then find their way into the food chain.
This is unlike, say, naturally radioactive carbon or potassium isotopes, that have a relatively constant concentration in the animal's body over it's life time - if a fish eats some high potassium food, it will excrete an equivalent of his own equally radioactive amount to maintain homeostasis.
It's for this exact reason the net "banana dose" of radiation, unless you are potassium deficient, is in fact zero.
TW: French
https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1694248709180084514
TEPCO did not detect any iron 55 or selenium 79, yet they are included in their estimates, at the worst possible doses, explcitly for safety. The amounts rejected and the radiation it exposes you to is about as harmful as living a few floors higher up that what you do. It's nothing.
Tritium does not become concentrated, that's why it's hard to collect and many countries drop it to ocean.
Your body now emits 5000 becquerels, which is around 70 becquerels per liter of your body. So that Fukushima radioactive water is only 2-3 times more radioactive than you. That is why 20 Bq/L limit proposed by the ODWAC does not make much sense.
Napkin math of 1.25 million tons of water is about 34,000 tanker trailers, or 3 a day over 30 years. So why doesn't JP just dump it in Lake Inawashiro a couple hours drive west? It's safe after all. Cost seems trivial. Except no one trusts TEPCO. Least of all the Japanese. Why would region trust JP any more? Dumping is offloading a domestic political problem to an international one because radiation + Japan + politcs = bad time. Enough that they're willing to give up to 600M in fish exports per year instead of dumping this very safe water on Japanese soil.
Why don't you just drink bleach instead of wiping down your countertop with it?
Seriously, I have a hard time assuming good will from your post if you do not try to differentiate the amount of dilution happening in a 100km2 50m deep lake vs a 100,000,000km2-sized 5,000m deep ocean.
If it's under drinkable thresholds, they should bottle them and see how their "San Tritiurino" "energy water" / "water with a kick" sells in shops.
You realize water is distilled right? "Drink-able water" is different from "One item is below safe drinking thresholds".
Drinking salty sea water is generally not recommended.
They can distill it and even flavour if they want.
They are trying to mislead you about the difference of "nuclear waste water" and "nuclear polluted water".
The waste water of nuclear plant will not directly touch the nuclear materials. However, the water Japan released did.
This seems also the only real problem left to me. I have no doubts that they get the concentration low enough. But I wonder how likely it is that there are still particles left in the water that in isolation might have unacceptable radiation/toxicity levels.
Regardless of source, it's same thing if what govt/IAEA checked is correct.
Latching onto any possible controversy.
China and South Korea are making a big fuss about it, despite producing and releasing more tritium than Japan.
Just a few minutes ago, The CPC (Communist Party of China) stated that it is suspending all imports of Japanese seafood to protect consumers.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-asia-66599189
> As expected, China has imposed a blanket ban on all Japanese seafood.
> Beijing announced some restrictions last month, but they were limited to 10 prefectures in Japan, including Fukushima and Tokyo. Earlier this week, Hong Kong announced a similar 10 prefecture ban on ‘aquatic produce’.
> South Korea, too, still blocks seafood imports from the Fukushima area. It's a ban that's been in place since 2013 and, although the government's political stance has softened, it is one that it has no intention of lifting.
> These are major customers for Japan and represent a lot of lost business. Nowhere buys more Japanese seafood than mainland China, which imported more than $600m worth last year. Remarkably, Hong Kong is only just behind - spending $520m on marine produce from Japan.
> Given China's consistent and vocal opposition to the wastewater release, it's a scenario that Japan's government probably envisaged. In the short-term, it admits businesses will take a 'significant' hit.
> In this sense, China understands the economic leverage it has over Japan and the question is whether Hong Kong will follow the mainland’s lead with another all-out ban.
> Either way, we're talking about major disruption for Japan's seafood industry and for restaurants in Hong Kong and China.
Source for claim that South Korea releases more than Japan?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_of_radioactive_water...
Annual release of tritium:
2020: South Korea Wolseong Nuclear Power Plant and others Total: 365tbq or 1,022mg
The total amount currently stored at Fukushima is around 860tbq, intended to be released over the course of 30 years.
So divide by 30 and that is around ~28tbq a year.
Either way, the halflife of tritium is around 14years, and it's everywhere in the ocean. This is actually a nothing burger.
Why does this only compare tritium, which is the supposedly safe material? What about "cesium, cobalt, lithium, and strontium" which are supposedly more dangerous?
Those elements have already been filtered out [1]:
> Radioactive materials such as cesium, strontium, iodine, and cobalt are purified by ALPS through co-precipitation treatment using solutions and adsorption on activated carbon and adsorbents. Almost all radioactive materials are removed through repeated treatment by ALPS, but tritium, which is a radioisotope of hydrogen, exists as a part of the water molecule and cannot be removed through treatment by ALPS and other equipment.
It's only tritium that can't be removed (and that is why it is released by other nuclear power plants - in larger quantities that is planned here - as part of normal operation).
[1] https://www.env.go.jp/en/chemi/rhm/basic-info/1st/06-03-05.h...
Gotcha. "as of January 2023, approximately 70% of the water stored in tanks still contained radioactive materials at concentrations exceeding the regulatory standards, in addition to tritium, due to such reasons as failures in purification equipment" -- so what's left is a matter of trust that they have got their equipment working and the actual water released isn't still contaminated.
Bottom line point stands, more is released regularly and this is nothing compared to the initial deluge of untreated material from the accident itself.
It’s not just a matter of trusting the Japanese government. The IAEA is also there to verify that things are as they say.
Because it is filtered out by every nuclear power plant that has an inkling of basic morals?
The only materials that aren't filtered out are Carbon14 and Tritium, if I remember correctly.
I never expect morals from large agencies. Have they allowed independent testing at the release point for the more dangerous isotopes?
For the former point, fair enough.
For the latter, obviously yes. The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Association) has done it's own independent tests, as well as actively monitored japanese tests while on site.
Good, the oceanic ecosystem is being destroying by fishing.
China will just illegally fish it itself
That is definitely true.
It is water that qas involved with a nuclear reactor.
Yes, people are that afraid of nuclear.
The greens of the 80's did so much more harm than good.
If we'd built the capacity then, we'd have a whole lot less carbon in the atmosphere today.
The anti-nuclear stance of the Greens can't be judged in isolation and must be seen in the context of the Cold War and the impeding Nuclear Armageddon.
I don't necessarily agree with the Greens but I remember this perilous time very well. And it was the incumbent non-Green powers who created this situation.
Furthermore, this is not the only theme the Greens pressed on and I must admit our country is already much much better for it ( cleaner air, cleaner waters ).
Not sure shutting down nukes and extending the life of coal power plants (or going all-in on Russian gas) was great for the air or water.
I wish your comment was better.
How can I improve it?
By considering the context of the OP and my response, which was the 80s. By not injecting partisan stuff. By adding something insightful or something we might not know already.
> cleaner air, cleaner waters
How much? Of what?
Trolls
There needs to be a distinction between greens who can and cannot add.
Same for the classic "look at that ugly city, so bad for the environment!" Bay area types who forced suburban sprawl.
The management of the establishment was what killed the vibe for fission energy. And in this regard the greens where right.
Many facilities (back then and now) where unsafe (e.g. Ukranie) and are still a threat (e.g. France)
Add to that the short sighted actions by everyone involved. (DROPPING barrels in an abandoned mine for final storage, just to find out it does not only totally leak, but advisors precisely warned about it beeing not a suitable location (germany))
For me that's enogh to loose trust in governments and companies beeing able to run such an operation. Fukushima beeing the final nail to this coffin for many.
Maybe when we can proof the reliability, safety and waste efficiency of modern reactor systems, we can rebuild this trust. But either way, we are surely talking 20-60 years. It's scorched earth.
> DROPPING barrels in an abandoned mine for final storage, just to find out it does not only totally leak, but advisors precisely warned about it beeing not a suitable location
And this is a massive political issue with which the Green parties collect millions of votes. Meanwhile "of 265 US power plants that monitor groundwater, 242 report unsafe levels of at least one pollutant derived from coal ash" - so instead of the small potential of ground water contamination from a small number of nuclear plant waste barrels, people passively chose the almost certainty of ground water contamination by leachate containing arsenic, barium, beryllium, boron, cadmium, nickel, lead, mercury, molybdenum, selenium and thallium - a chunk of it radioactive.
But it got votes.
Maybe that's the biggest problem, really.
The design, deployment, regulatory/political hurdles, and the long operational lifetime of nuclear power plants, make that any improvements take a loooonng time to bear fruit.
Inertia of the installed base with its problems (and history), makes new development near-impossible.
That situation propably won't improve until newer designs accumulate a multi-decade track record of safety, or fusion power gets commercialized.
> Umm, what's the controversy here?
Did you see Godzilla ? /s
These facts won't convince people who believe in homeopathy, of which there are plenty. Of course there shouldn't be a controversy, but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that there is, considering the amount of anti-scientific sentiments in the general population.
If I shit in the ocean, does the ocean become highly potent and poisonous because its highly diluted shit?
Shit breaks down into food.
In the ocean: bacteria food -> plant food -> fish food.
According to homeopathy, it does become potent, yes, but not poisonous, because it will magically heal whatever disease ingesting shit causes.
With one caveat: homeopathy says that the water has to be diluted by a certain process which involves tapping it ten times during full moon or some non-sense like that.
The reaction of China and South Korea is hilariously hypocritical. Both countries have been dumping nuclear waste water in the ocean for years - and continue doing that.
Geopolitics at it's worst.
I was reading that article earlier this morning https://hongkongfp.com/2023/07/31/radioactive-seafood-compla... that indeed corroborate your saying.
Or at its accidental best. Anything to reduce fishing or animal farming is a tremendously good thing for the environment.
To be fair, current Korean regime is calm.
Source?
Last 50+ years of history especially, but pretty much as much history as you can find for the region.
You do realize that neither South Korea nor China has ever dumped any nuclear POLLUTED (directly in contact with core) water into the ocean? I do not know where you come from, but blind trust in the Japanese government or TEPCO could also be geopolitics at it's worst. Especially if you consider that many of the families influential of Japanese politics during WW2 when they did horrible things in Korea and China still have influence today (unlike the case in Germany), taking the point of view from those who got invaded and lost tens of millions of lives, many in horrific massacres comparable to the holocaust, perhaps merely distrust is itself already very generous. I would favor the stance to demand more transparency and even more independent international investigation before measures are taken than to brush it off as no issue, even if only just for the peace of mind to the people of Korea and China.
EDIT: Typo
So why not dump this very safe water on Japanese soil? There's lakes and reservoirs a short drive away. A few tankers a day over 30 years to clear up 1.25 million tons is cheap to losing 600M of fish exports per year to PRC and barely impact local enviroment on time scales involved. Maybe inspire some new Godzilla movies. Oh wait, it's because Japanese domestic politics wouldn't allow it. So gov would rather internationalize the issue.
Japanese domestic politics at it's worst.
Because that's not how dilution works? That part should be incredibly obvious.
I keep seeing this nonsense about "why not dump it into the dirt", as if that ever made any sense. The answer is always simple, there is already a massive amount of Tritium in the ocean.
The water, is also literally sea water. It is salt water taken from the ocean, now with some radioactive isotopes of hydrogen (H20 remember?) which is called tritium. The dilution process literally takes sea water, and mixes it.
Dumping salt water into a local lake or river, or the dirt is literally what starts ecological disasters. But you didn't even do basic research did you?
>Because that's not how dilution works
...
>But you didn't even do basic research did you?
It makes sense BECAUSE that's exactly how dilution works. Diluting in Japanese lakes (or just the closest) is still as safe as diluting the fucking ocean because japanese lakes are also fucking massive relative to volume of water to be released. Politicians chose ocean because domestic politics. Use your brain and do some basic math. Dump all 1.25 tons / 1.2B litres / 660T becquerels into Lake Inawashiro @ 5.4km3 / 5.4T litres and it'll work out to ~120 becquerels of tritium per litre, still less than WHO limit of 10,000 per litre for drinking water. Diluting 1/5400 of the one lake with some salt water, +0.01% salienty, which is... drum roll fresh water territory. That's dumping everything at once. Now spread it out over 30 years. Spread that out over even more bodies of water and it's even more trivial. JP gov chose negligible domestic ecologic disaster with terrible domestic optics that will affect domestic sentiment and governance for negligible chance of international disaster with more managable optics. Which is still based on assumption that TEPCO can be trusted for decades and release will indeed be negligible. But we both know that's far from certain given reputation, hence JP gov would rather hedge by offloading potential political fallout into international commons, because they can't trust TEPCO not to fuck around on the time scale involved, so best not even risk something as sensitive as more radiation drama on JP soil. They'd rather risk losing 100s of billions in fishing exports than potential domestic ire. Which is fine. But also recognize this issue has as much if not more politics considerations than science. But you didn't even do basic political/geopolitical thinking relative to science did you?
Ok, lets take this at face value. Does any, and I do mean literally any country on this planet, dump their tritium water in the local lake?
Problem 1 : Water extraction
Extracting large volumes of water, is naturally not a ecologically friendly practice. It's actually one of the large barriers stopping us from solving water issues via large scale desalination. Ecological damage includes animals being sucked in, to higher water temperatures causing algae blooms. (Moving all that water, does overall increase the water temperature) Furthermore, it may actually case over-oxygenation of the water, which can cause it's own set of problems. But I'm not a specialist so I will leave that topic as "I have heard of this thing".
Problem 2 : Actual dilution
That's not all though. You need to ensure local PH balances are stable. Since we are starting off by using ocean water (it was the closest and most viable option), you now have to do an ecological analysis of the lake, and make the water match the lake's overall water profile. That requires a whole other set of equipment, and imported materials to balance it out. Of course, "it's relatively speaking, a drop in an lake", but that's the thing, it's a lake. It doesn't have ocean currents.
The Lake is overall a enclosed environment, when compared to the ocean. And it is one hell of a lot more expensive than the ocean, which is right next door!
Now lets take your number, 120 becquerels of tritium per liter. Lets ignore the WHO safe level for a moment. Since our goal is diluting it, preferably, we won't appreciably change the per-liter value of tritium in fresh water. But that's not the case is it? The natural background amount of tritium in 1cubic liter in surface water is around 0.4–1.2 Bq/L. So your proposal, increases the amount by 100x. That misses the entire point of "dilution", which is why I said it doesn't count. When you dilute something like this, the whole point is to dilute in a manner that makes environmental effects negligible. Your proposal, misses the entire point.
Further more, they are only releasing ~28becquerels (officially it is 22becquerels) per year into the ocean, to ensure proper dilution. Divide 28 by 365 days, that is 0.077becquerels per cubic liter (rounded up), in an entire 24 hour cycle! Which would bring it very close to the natural background! This is dilution! This is the bloody point of it all!
Dumping it all in a lake, makes this completely pointless!
Problem 3 : Logistics (AKA, why are we even transporting this?)
This one is simple. Why in the actual hell, would you spend time and risk a truck flipping, rather than just use the pipe you already have and release into the ocean? And this ties into the two previous comments. You have to extract water from the lake, bring it to the water storage facility, mix it, then transport it back.
Or take sea water, desalinate it, then get it to the correct profile, then transport... The amount of extra steps, and chances for human error are significantly higher. It's impractical, and a waste of time.
Problem 4 : Local Resistance (Or domestic politics)
Naturally, locals don't like it. It doesn't matter if it's safe, or checked by independent auditors or international organizations. Humans are overall, emotional, social creatures. Not logical ones. Local pressure is naturally easier to evade if you say "It won't be your problem in the future", which is unfortunately how humans work. Hell, if I had the money, I'd buy the lake (which isn't possible), and let them dump it there (Which I cant, because the fresh-water underground water table is legally protected). Of course, I would tell them "It won't be a problem in 14 years, due to the half-life", but they won't care.
Non-salt water is also significantly more valuable than salt water. It's the difference between incredibly energy intensive and expensive desalination and, just not needing it. People care more about non-salt water than salt water.
I'd happily drink it, assuming it's boiled and de-salted. (And I am not being facetious)
You're drawing some arbituary point of even more negligible dilution when mathematically, flat out dumping everything straight into Inawashiro is still merely 1% of WHO limit for safe drinking water. It would already be adequately diluted for human health. It's already likely sufficiently negligible considering the ratio of solution:solvent. Spread that over 30/50 or whatever years over water cycles and different locations and it's even less of an issue. It would be bloody diluted regardless, especially so when titrated on multi decade time scale. I'd happily drink it. And I am not being facetious.
Ultimately, regardless of feasibility, it's simply a solution which they didn't even consider, because again, as you recognized why would they. That's politically suicide even if it's deemed ecologically sound plan. Which circles back to your first point, does any country dump tritium in their local lake? Not publically, and Fukushima is notoriously public politics. But you know what most try to do with nuclear waste? They attempt to engineer supremely expensive local storage solutions, and frequently fail only to spend stupid resources to warehouses it domestically, instead of dumping that into the commons. It's 60 olympic swimming pools worth of water. It's trivial storage problem for nation state. Hence problem 1/2/3 isn't even a problem especially if they bothered with local dumping studies which again, is 3 tankers per day for 30 years. It's nothing. Desalinating 1.25m tons is also trivial, and not even that costly. A 10m gallon / day plant cost less than 100M and sort filter that in a month. Which is peanuts versus aggregate clean up cost, and even potential lost fishing revenue. Cost isn't driving this decision to release, politics is. And it's not regional geopolitics because JP isn't releasing this water out of spite for her neighbours. Let's not forget, it's not PRC but most of region as well as countries across the Pacific not pleased with this decision.
Which ultimately circles back to point 4, and my broader point. LOCALs don't like it. LOCALs vote. Can't risk LOCAL votes even if they're irrational, and EVEN worse if their rational distrust of TEPCO becomes reality down the line. IIRC even more containated water already leeched into ground water. Risk of future leaks, however "safe" this water is, and heads will roll. So the politically expedient solution is to dump into ocean and remove any potential risk. The political math is simple, they would never even consider local disposal or long term local storage due to the risks, so into the ocean it goes. Which again, is fine. Fine in the sense that it's a calculated decision. But let's just acknowledge that's whats actually driving decision making. Less science and more domestic JP politics. They didn't have to dump this water. A 5T economy can afford to store it indefintely and ignore geopolitical shit show. But domestic JP politics want that water gone from JP territory, so into the ocean it goes.
So I agree with your point that it would be heavily opposed by local residents if they tried to dump it in a lake. And yes an elected government is going to be more concerned with keeping their voters happy than than their neighbors who are engaged in opportunistic political posturing. But I don't think this is unique to Japan at all. Look at the pushback that the US got when they tried to bury spent nuclear waste in an uninhabited section of desert [1]. And politicians being beholden to their constituents' demands is a feature of democracy, not a bug.
And also like Prickle says it's all moot because releasing it into the ocean is the better solution - in terms of cost, risk, dilution effectiveness, and political feasibility. Maybe their fishing industry would be impacted less if they dumped it in a lake - although I suspect the effect will be temporary as the global market reconfigures itset, and South Korea already bans fish and agricultural products from Fukushima, and Japan was already headed toward a trade war with China for other geopolitical reasons. There would also be economic impacts as a result of dumping it in Lake Inawashiro - for example to tourism in the Lake Inawashiro area. Is that a good trade-off? I don't think the answer is as obvious as you claim.
And I don't know how you can claim "it's simply a solution which they didn't even consider" - were you there in the room when the engineers were drawing up ways to treat the wastewater before deciding on this one? Honestly I find it perplexing that you are so fixated on this notion that because they didn't choose some suboptimal solution to dispose of waste water, somehow that is emblematic of "Japanese domestic politics at it's worst".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
>perplexing that you are so fixated
It was just a retort to OP comment of regional reaction to JP release being geopolitics at it's worst when incentive calculus points to decision to release being JP domestic politics at it's worst (even if it's also politically optimal/expedient). As far as being in room, I don't see how that's relevant. All we have is what has been publicly communicated and it was between aerial release and water, both of which = release into commons, what solution makes to public discourse is as important as what doesn't - the numbers released so far suggest domestic storage/disposal was feasible, but again, that's a politically non-starter. I find it perplexing people can judge what's optimal/suboptimal based on science when this is predominantly a political issue due to domestic and regional trust of TEPCO. The fundmental issue is people, including japanese does not trust TEPCO even with oversight to behave correctly long term. So the politically expedient thing for JP politics to do is dump in commons to avoid potential domestic blowback, because local storage not politically viable option. And natural regional geopolitical response to that would be fishing bans because JP made a potential domestic problem a regional one. How optimal the solution is a function of politics/incentives. In this case one that involves radiation that sensible geopolitical response would be to keep that shit in your borders regardless of cost. Yucca mountain fine example, it's a fucking shitshow but it's still US at least keeping their nuclear waste on domestic soil, it's US gov eating the cost, as they should. But IIT we have useful idiots whose like, punishing said dick move is geopolitics at it's worst.
It's not arbitrary, and I don't understand why you think it is. It's not even a mathematical issue. At it's core, it has always been an environmental issue.
Fundamentally, the complaint is that the tritium water will cause environmental damage. => And will lead to damage to humans. If we go down to the roots of the issue, it has not, and never was centered around whether the bq/L was below human drinking limits. It has always been about whether the bq/L amount is safe for the environment. That's why I brought up the natural range in the first place. If anything, claims about it being safe to drink have been a distraction brought up to placate protestors. (And it misses the point)
Therefore, the powerplant should be (and has been) required to reduce environmental effects. When it comes to controlling the Catastrophically F'd reactors, they've been less than capable to say the least. But that's not explicitly related to the tritium water we are discussing about right now.
So, the goal should be to minimize environmental damage. In order to better ensure that, the Tritium water should not cause a major change in composition of the water. Therefore, the bq/L of tritium in water, should preferably, not change beyond the naturally expected amount. (ie: 0.4–1.2 bq/L) Hence why I brought up how your solution violates that basic idea, while the sea release does not. I even showed you the very basic napkin math that made me come to that conclusion.
You do realize, one of the other proposed solutions was actually release by air? After all, Tritium is an isotope of Hydrogen. That plan was specifically dropped because the amount of expected tritium per cubic liter of air, would be greater than when released in water. The decision from the start, has been about minimizing the becquerels per cubic liter. Certainly, the government would accept nothing else.
I should point out, the water is more dangerous when stored. By default, the stored water has a significantly higher concentration until it is diluted. Certainly, higher than the safe level. A leak from the tanks would cause significantly more environmental damage. Just like with aircraft design, where every contingency is considered, we must also consider every contingency for when that containment fails. History has shown us multiple times, that inevitably, even the best built systems are destroyed by human error.
Quite frankly, your complaints are more arbitrary than mine. You are proposing that Japan should take the concerns of uninformed individuals, over the concerns and claims made by professionals.
No, I'm highlighting professionals, ESPECIALLY policy makers, are politically constrained in what they can recommend/advocate. They are more compromised by default. I'm aware of the release by air solution, and it reinforces my fact that domestic storage/disposal, though expensive, was likely never properly considered, not because of science or viability, but because domestic politics forbids it. Fundamentally, the problem is one of (geo)political trust. No one trusts TEPCO not to fuck up regardless of oversight, hence the actual science is _politically_ irrelevant. When that's the trust baseline, the region would prefer Japan to keep their domestic nuclear mess up as a domestic problem, within their borders either via domestic storage or disposal. JP political incentive is the opposite, they'd rather dump it off into commons to prevent blowback citing good science, when good science is irrelevant because it can be trivially invalidated by conspiracy/coverup, which TEPCO+JP politics name a more iconic duo. Good science isn't causing SKR/PRC residents to panic and stock up salt or reduce fish consumption if JP fish isn't banned to reduce perception of contamination risk. JP politicians did what's optimal/expedient for them and constituents - offload a literal radioactive problem into regional geopolitics. Which is... fine, even if dick move because one would expect wealthy countries with capability to keep these problems domestic despite cost. The original response to OP was to point out that JP domestic politics at its worst is what’s driving regional geopolitics, which is not responding in a vacuum, and political responses not constrained by science, because science is not sufficient without political trust.
Worth noting that coal plants release radioactive air without making the news. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
Unfortunately, humans generally don't care about what they can't see.
We can see pollution in water, on land, but not in the air.