So far, the release of treated waste water from the ravaged nuclear power installation seems to have gone smoothly. The emphasis is on the "treated". As I understand it, any radioactive elements that can be removed have been, and the outflow is diluted considerably before release into the Pacific 250km away from the site. Some of the water is tritiated, that is, the hydrogen atoms have been converted to a weak beta-emitter, tritium. This tritiated water cannot practically be separated from the outflow, but it constitutes a minute percentage and, as the advice from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission makes clear, poses a negligible threat. The water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, well below the World Health Organization drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre.
There has been predictable breast-beating from the Chinese who have no love for democratic Japan. However, China has several nuclear plants on her Pacific coast, each discharging more tritium as part of their normal operations than the Fukushima release. This graphic based by Al-Jazeera on official figures, demonstrates that the Chinese reaction is hypocritical and political:
One trusts that the Japanese authorities had started taking samples from their coastal waters when the release was first mooted, so that proper before-and-after comparisons could be made in order to reassure the local fishing community and the public at large. It would be instructive to do the same for Chinese coastal waters, but as we saw over SARS-COV2 the Beijing authorities are against garnering useful scientific data.
PS: It seems from the diagram that the older a nuclear power-plant, the leakier. Canada's Darlington was completed in 1993; Heysham is around forty years old. It is not surprising that Ireland is concerned about the continuing operation of Heysham, on the Lancashire coast. On the other hand, there have been no reports of nuclear-related incidents from the Irish Sea.
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