this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

Can someone with knowledge chime in to tell how bad that is? I don't trust this article or China for that matter.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Very very small amounts of radiation is not bad. Your body is exposed to this every day.

Japans plan is to dilute the "water" so much that it should be at safe levels while it decays. They're also not going to release all of it at once, which might not be clear to some readers.

I believe their plan is widely recognized to be safe, but obviously there is a lot of fear around nuclear and radiation.

I believe the worry is that this amount has never Been released before, and that while we might consider it safe, there is a chance it accumulates somewhere to harmful levels.

And obvious consumers of fish are already reacting. Would you buy "safe" fish from Chernobyl if you could just as easily buy the same fish from South Korea?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You don’t trust Reuters? Reuters is about as trustworthy and unbiased as you can get. They’re like the gold standard for non-editorialized journalism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I've always heard it as Reuters is what the markets use to make their "bets" so has to be true enough to inform them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Here's the IAEA report: https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/iaea_comprehensive_alps_report.pdf

The discharge limit for tritium is pre-defined in the Government Policy for discharges of ALPS treated water as 22 TBq per year, which is equivalent to the pre-accident discharge limits at FDNPS.

I'm also curious about how much discharge nuclear generators normally produce. If they discharge a certain amount as part of normal operation then it seems to me to also become a function of how many nuclear generators are being operated globally.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The Hongyanhe reactor annually releases 4x as many becquerels of tritium. The Fukushima metldown released 5,000x as much. So this is obviously a non-issue being drummed up due to politics. 🙄

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The IAEA approved the release, so it’s unlikely to be catastrophic. I can’t imagine radioactive tritium is great for fish, but what do I know.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

It'll dilute so quickly and thoroughly into the ocean that it might as well not be there. This is a classic case of the public panicking over the word "nuclear."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Nor is pissing in an Olympic pool, but at some point you’re at homeopathic levels and while it “sounds wrong” is actually totally fine.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don’t trust this article or China for that matter.

Then I guess it's a good thing that this is Japan we are talking about.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm fairly confident they were referring to the criticism from China FTA, but you'd need to read past the headline for that context so...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yes that was it. Chinas comments have been over the top for a bunch of issues in the past, there's no reason to just presume their stance has merit.

Especially since they are starting fires again rn regarding Taiwan and Japan in different context.