Japanese officials say they've put off the "unavoidable" release long enough.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga says that the government has put off figuring out what to do with all of the contaminated water building up at the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant for long enough — and it’s time to start dumping it into the ocean.
Suga’s hand is forced given that the plant will soon run out of space to store the contaminated groundwater seeping into the facility, The Japan Times reports, and he’s framing the controversial plan to release the water into the Pacific Ocean as “unavoidable.”
Japanese officials have been debating how to best contain the radioactive water at the Fukushima plant for years, but the plan that seems to have stuck is to purify the water as best as possible, dilute the radioactive tritium that persists even after the cleaning process, and to dump it over the course of 30 years.
“What to do with the [treated] water is a task that the government can no longer put off without setting a policy,” Japanese trade minister Hiroshi Kajiyama told reporters on Wednesday.
But outside of government halls, the plan is still considerably unpopular, especially among fishers who are concerned no one will want to buy fish caught in radioactive waters. Reasonably so, too, since 15 countries and regions still restrict imports from the Fukushima prefecture, according to the Japan Times.
Suga is expected to make a formal decision on the release by next Tuesday, according to the newspaper. If the government proceeds, the plan will be to dilute tritium down to just 2.5 percent of the maximum concentration allowed by national standards before dumping it out.
That means, Japanese officials say, the water won’t be dangerous to people — though only time will tell how much people trust it.
READ MORE: Suga says time ripe to decide fate of treated Fukushima No.1 water [The Japan Times]
More on Fukushima: Fukushima Plans to Power Region With 100% Renewable Energy
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struggi123 on April 8th, 2021 at 12:46 UTC »
Well, there is no other choice really.
They gotta dilute it and release it slowly..
Edit:
I am making this edit to clear up some stuff I see a lot of people have been asking/saying.
Shipping it to the Arctic is not a feasible solution.
Sending it to space... do I even have to answer this.
Evaporating it? No.
The amount of water they're going to release into the ocean over the course of the next 30 years compared to the size of the Pacific Ocean is unimaginably small. Imagine it like a drop of sweat from a fruit fly into a pool.
It will make no significant change or damage as it will only increase the radioactivity of the Ocean by a grand total of 1 ten millionth of a percent.
Japan has already been diluting the water as much as they can making it as safe as they can possibly make it.
Edit 2:
Thank you for the Gold, and other awards kind strangers.
Stay safe.
Edit 3:
I am as far as it comes from a scientist, but I see more and more people are asking about the space one, I'll try to answer it MY way so do your research and don't take my word for granted.
It's not cost effective.
We already have enough junk orbiting the earth.
What if the rocket or ROCKETS fail on launch and explode on the pad? What if it fails during fly or atmosphere exit and they fall back to earth landing who knows where? (probably the ocean)
series_hybrid on April 8th, 2021 at 12:18 UTC »
Dilution is the solution to pollution.
Edit, I heard this as a joke when I was taking classes to get a haz cleanup license
autotldr on April 8th, 2021 at 11:01 UTC »
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 62%. (I'm a bot)
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