No detectable amount of tritium has been found in fish samples taken from waters near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, where the discharge of treated radioactive water into the sea began a month ago, the government said Monday.
Tritium was not detected in the latest sample of two olive flounders caught Sunday, the Fisheries Agency said on its website. The agency has provided almost daily updates since the start of the water release, in a bid to dispel harmful rumors both domestically and internationally about its environmental impact.
The results of the first collected samples were published Aug. 9, before the discharge of treated water from the complex commenced on Aug. 24. The water had been used to cool melted nuclear fuel at the plant but has undergone a treatment process that removes most radionuclides except tritium.
Too bad the whole nuclear life cycle involves extraction, refinement, transportation, and yes the small slice of the cycle where it’s used on the sub, then removal, and waste management (a misnomer since there still isnt any really in a lot of cases). And that whole long chain isn’t nearly as concise and clear cut, and safe as looking at just the small slice of time spent on the sub.
now do extraction, refinement, transportation, etc. for diesel
Ooh, and do lifetime emissions, and compare it with actual energy output of the source!
I think that if the environmental movement emphasized how much radioactive material is released by coal and other fossil fuels, we’d have a lot less public resistance to phasing them out.
what·a·bout·ism
/ˌ(h)wədəˈboudizəm/ nounBRITISH noun: whataboutism
the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation or raising a different issue. “the parliamentary hearing appeared to be an exercise in whataboutism”
Woah, it’s almost like the universe didn’t give us easily accessible energy for doing nothing.
Wow. Let me know when oil doesn’t need to be extracted, refined, and doesn’t produce waste.
Hell, coal literally contains trace uranium, and its waste products aren’t accounted as “radioactive waste” even though they are.
The only reason we burn any coal in the US is bc of politics and West Virgina. There’s no defending coal use at any level.
I appreciate the discourse, my only intent with my comment was to give a perspective as to how operationally safe it is. That is not to say I would be alright with being in the Reactor Compartment while it was operational, that would lead to certain and painful death.
I haven’t really considered the relative environmental impact of the extraction, refinement, removal, and waste management of nuclear fuel and how that compares to other alternatives like coal or gas. I would suspect that carbon emissions from that process are significantly more.
I would however expect that the environmental impact is significantly less for the other items on your list like transportation and more specifically operation.
You do seem to be pretty aware of the state of energy research, do you happen to have any recommended papers to take a look at that might shed some light on the overall environmental impacts of nuclear and how they compare to the current alternatives?
If you have 100x emissions, but 1000x the efficiency of the fuel (numbers may be overblown), then it’s still better for the environment.
Nuclear waste is probably the biggest issue, as we have to take care of the storage site.
However, we could always either repurpose it or yeet it into space, away from any other close planet collision course.
Newer reactor designs are able to consume nuclear waste and use it as fuel. Look up breeder reactors. If we want to minimize nuclear waste, we need to build more reactors ironically.
As usual with this sort of calculation you want to not factor the magnitude of risk wich is also significantly higher.
And as for yeeting into space, nuclear is already expensive, add in launch costs etc… now you’re incuring much larger risk at much greater cost.
Also… ever seen a rocket blow up? Wonder what happens to a dedicated shipment of nuclear waste when that happens?
While yeeting things into space sounds cool, I am sceptical of the viability of that strategy.
Putting things into space is very expensive and putting them in a solar orbit is even more expensive.
Isn’t nuclear waste also really heavy? And guess what that means, it’s getting more expensive.
It also isn’t very environmentally friendly to send shit into space and of course even less friendly considering how heavy nuclear waste is.
In my opinion, they should find a nice, stable continental plate and in the middle of that, drill some relatively small diameter boreholes. Drill them ten or twenty kilometres apart to a depth that exercises our current technology, drop sealed waste into the bottom of said holes, top them off to 200m below the surface with concrete, and then backfill the rest with dirt.
After that, remove all evidence of anything ever being there on the surface.
If you have the technology to drill a hole 3-4km deep then you have also the tech to detect radioactive material.
Small diameter boreholes that kind of distance apart are basically undetectable by geophysical survey with our current technology so nothing in particular would ever be seen.
The quantity of worldwide high level radioactive waste that can’t be reprocessed could easy be disposed of in this manner.
The high tech equivalent of a cat burying their shit. While I like the idea of yeeting stuff into space, this is also beautifully simple.
I remember talks of building places with the use of symbols or other non-linguistic messaging to keep future populations at bay, I think that was in Finland or something.
I do have some research papers that I will pull up on my machine when home.
I’m also not saying don’t use nuclear. I’m commenting on the fanboi risk dismissive misinformation that they like to peddle in here.
And I appreciate the discourse and meant no offense and wasn’t try to say you were implying anything about the rest of the process. I was just pointing out that it’s one of nuke propaganda favorite methods of misinformation by ignoring the life cycle.
Again, I’ll try and send you some of those papers and articles when I’m home. Thanks for the reply.
Now do solar and wind. What materials are used, what wastes are produced, how much energy is consumed.
what·a·bout·ism
/ˌ(h)wədəˈboudizəm/
noun
BRITISH
noun: whataboutism
the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation or raising a different issue.
“the parliamentary hearing appeared to be an exercise in whataboutism”
If you think it’s whataboutism to ask for information that lets you fairly compare things on an equal basis, I’m not sure there’s anything I can say really.
You were downvoted because you told the truth about nuclear power, not because people thought you were responding to a question that wasn’t asked.
They were downvoted for telling a half truth. Technically true, but ignoring the context that makes it a good thing. Sure, it needs to be extracted, refined, and (to be clean) contained. All energy sources need the same, except dirty energy at least doesn’t contain their waste.
LOL I’m laughing about the huge amount of whatabout-isms in the replies. I appreciate them making my point.