The Russian nuclear ship thing got me wondering about this little disaster

http://www.stltoday.com/news/w...9b-f06fdc5ddde7.html



The number of storage tanks for contaminated water and other materials has continuously increased at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Japan, and space for still more tanks is approaching the limit.
Behind this is the fact that a way to get rid of treated water, or tritium water, has not been decided yet. The government and TEPCO will have to make a tough decision on disposal of tritium water down the road.

At the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, groundwater and other water enters the reactor buildings that suffered meltdowns, where the water becomes contaminated. This produces about 160 tons of contaminated water per day. Purification devices remove many of the radioactive materials, but tritium — a radioactive isotope of hydrogen — cannot be removed for technical reasons. Thus, treated water that includes only tritium continues to increase.

Currently, the storage tanks have a capacity of about 1.13 million tons. About 1.07 million tons of that capacity is now in use, of which about 80 percent is for such treated water.
Space for tanks, which has been made by razing forests and other means, amounts to about 230,000 square meters — equivalent to almost 32 soccer fields. There is almost no more available vacant space.

Efforts have been made to increase storage capacity by constructing bigger tanks when the time comes for replacing the current ones. But a senior official of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry said, "Operation of tanks is close to its capacity."

TEPCO plans to secure 1.37 million tons of storage capacity by the end of 2020, but it has not yet decided on a plan for after 2021. Akira Ono, chief decommissioning officer of TEPCO, said, "It is impossible to continue to store [treated water] forever."



Tritium exists in nature, such as in seas and rivers, and is also included in tap water. The ordinary operations of nuclear plants produce tritium as well. Nuclear plants, both in Japan and overseas, have so far diluted it and released it into the sea or elsewhere. An average of 380 trillion becquerels had been annually released into the sea across Japan during the five years before the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

Bottles that contain the treated water continue to be brought one after another to a building for chemical analysis on the grounds of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. The tritium concentration of the treated water is up to more than 1 million becquerels per liter, which is more than 10 times higher than the national standard for release into the sea — 60,000 becquerels per liter. But if diluted, it can be released into the sea.
Regarding disposal methods for the treated water, the industry ministry's working group compiled a report in June 2016 that said that the method of release into the sea is the cheapest and quickest among five ideas it examined. The ideas were (1) release into the sea, (2) release by evaporation, (3) release after electrolysis, (4) burial underground and (5) injection into geological layers.

After that, the industry ministry also established an expert committee to look into measures against harmful misinformation. Although a year and a half has passed since the first meeting of the committee, it has not yet reached a conclusion.

At the eighth meeting of the committee held on Friday, various opinions were expressed. One expert said, "While the fishery industry [in Fukushima and other prefectures] is in the process of revival, should we dispose of [the treated water] now?" The other said, "In order to advance the decommissioning, the number of tanks should be decreased at an early date."
The committee plans to hold a public hearing in Fukushima Prefecture and other places to hear citizens' opinions on methods of disposal

quote:

Bottles that contain the treated water continue to be brought one after another to a building for chemical analysis on the grounds of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. The tritium concentration of the treated water is up to more than 1 million becquerels per liter, which is more than 10 times higher than the national standard for release into the sea — 60,000 becquerels per liter. But if diluted, it can be released into the sea.

This is a bogus strategy. If you dilute it enough, than you can release into the sea. But the total amount you're releasing into the sea still remains the same. It's like saying I have a 55 gallon drum of oil that I can't release to the sea but if I mix it with a 1000 55-gallon drums of water then I can release to the sea. I'm still dumping a 55-gallon drum of oil into the sea. net resut.

I may be missing something but why not just boil the water off then bury what remains. Or night sites for everybody!

If they dump the radioactive material, deep into the seas....Isn't that sort of how Godzilla got started?

Unrepentant Godzilla Fan

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
This is a bogus strategy. If you dilute it enough, than you can release into the sea. But the total amount you're releasing into the sea still remains the same. It's like saying I have a 55 gallon drum of oil that I can't release to the sea but if I mix it with a 1000 55-gallon drums of water then I can release to the sea. I'm still dumping a 55-gallon drum of oil into the sea. net resut.

I may be missing something but why not just boil the water off then bury what remains. Or night sites for everybody!

The solution to pollution is dilution.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I may be missing something but why not just boil the water off then bury what remains.

Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen and is a gas. It’s presumably in the water because it’s dissolved there like other gases such as oxygen (that fish breathe) or carbon dioxide (that makes our beer and soda fizzy). If we boil the water (turn it into a gas as well), the oxygen, carbon dioxide, or tritium isn’t going to be left behind in the bottom of the pot. Rather than being dissolved in the water, it will spread out across the landscape.

Maybe they can use all that extra tritium for some awesome night sites.

quote:

Originally posted by FN in MT:
If they dump the radioactive material, deep into the seas....Isn't that sort of how Godzilla got started?

Unrepentant Godzilla Fan

There haven't been any new Godzilla movies in, well, at least a few months now. I suppose it's time for another one.

Just sent a link to this article to Trijicon CS, I'll let y'all know what they say.

quote:

The solution to pollution is dilution.

my engineering buddy from decades ago revamped this into his version "the delusion of a solution ignores pollution". He thought he was being inventive.

First thing that popped in my head.

I got curious about how tritium is used in night sights and watches. Found this article that talks about it. An interesting factoid in the later part of the article states

quote:

Tritium gas is what we might call “mildly radioactive.” Its half life is 12.36 years – much, much less than the over 1600 years half life of radium, a highly radioactive material that had been used on watch dials and hands over half a century ago

So how long ago did this accident happen? And how long have they been storing this contaminated water?

quote:

Originally posted by jbcummings:


So how long ago did this accident happen? And how long have they been storing this contaminated water?

Let me Google that for you...

quote:

Originally posted by jbcummings:
I got curious about how tritium is used in night sights and watches. Found this article that talks about it. An interesting factoid in the later part of the article states

quote:

Tritium gas is what we might call “mildly radioactive.” Its half life is 12.36 years – much, much less than the over 1600 years half life of radium, a highly radioactive material that had been used on watch dials and hands over half a century ago

So how long ago did this accident happen? And how long have they been storing this contaminated water?

The problem is that they keep making more. As water passes through the radioactive areas the hydrogen gains an extra neutron becoming tritium or as the H2O molecule called heavy water.

The solution is simple. Purify the heavy water out. Make hydrogen bombs. Drop the bombs on North Korea, Iran, and California.

Multi-tasking at its finest.

Freeze it. Bury it in ant artica.

Sink it to 20,000 fathoms ...

Could you throw it into a volcano?

Something ain't right with that report. Tritium is created from normal Hydrogen by absorbing TWO neutrons. That requires a very high neutron field or source, like an nuclear reactor operating at full power. A shutdown reactor, even one that melted down, just isn't generating much in the way of neutrons. Certainly not enough to transform Hydrogen to Deuterium to Tritium in any quantity. And some of those neutrons would be sopped up by the Oxygen in the water, at about the same rate as the Hydrogen.

For example, Three Mile Island's core was completely trashed, but didn't have this issue at all.

They may as well put it in the ocean. It's gonna end up there eventually, unfortunately.