1/13/2024 0 Comments Newsletter expert![]() The radiation dose to people is measured in sieverts, or millionths of sieverts (microsieverts), where a dose of 1,000 microsieverts represents a one in 25,000 chance of dying early from cancer. Diluting the wastewater before it is released will reduce the radiation dose to people. Japanese studies estimate that the wastewater will be diluted from hundreds of thousands of Bq per liter of tritium in the storage tanks to 1,500 Bq per liter in discharge water. Safe releaseīut the release of radioactive water must be done properly. ![]() ![]() Significantly higher rates of release from Cap de la Hague than planned at Fukushima have shown no evidence of significant environmental impacts and doses to people are low. While annually, the Cap de la Hague nuclear fuel reprocessing site in northern France releases roughly 10 PBq of tritium into the English Channel. This sounds like a huge number but globally, 50-70 PBq of tritium is produced naturally in our atmosphere by cosmic rays each year. Animals tend to have around 100 times more radiocaesium than in the surrounding water because caesium magnifies up the food chain. This means exposed animals would have roughly the same concentration of tritium in their bodies as the surrounding water.īy comparison, radioactive caesium 137, released in large quantities after Fukushima and from the UK's Sellafield nuclear site in the 1960s and 70s, has a bioaccumulation factor in marine environments of roughly 100. Tritiated water has a bioaccumulation factor of about one. Chemically identical to normal water, tritiated water passes through organisms like water does and so does not strongly accumulate in the bodies of living things. A review of tritium separation technologies in 2020 found that they are unable to process the huge volumes of water required.īut as radioactive elements go, tritium is relatively benign and its existence as tritiated water reduces its environmental impact. Tritiated water is chemically identical to normal water, which makes separating it from wastewater expensive, energy intensive and time consuming. When one of the hydrogen atoms in water is replaced by tritium, it forms radioactive tritiated water. But tritium – a radioactive form of hydrogen – is left behind. These include cobalt 60, strontium 90 and caesium 137. Contaminated waterīefore it is stored, the wastewater produced at Fukushima is treated to remove almost all of the radioactive elements. I think that releasing the wastewater is the best option. So the Japanese authorities have given the site permission to release the stored radioactive water through a pipeline to the Pacific Ocean.Īs an environmental scientist, I have worked on the impacts of radioactive pollutants in the environment for more than 30 years. Over 1,000 tanks have been built on site to store over a million tonnes of radioactive water.īut the site is running out of storage space and the tanks could leak, particularly in the event of an earthquake or a typhoon. Water was needed to cool the damaged reactors and groundwater that became contaminated as it infiltrated the site had to be pumped out and stored. Huge volumes of contaminated water have accumulated on the site since.
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