• its_prolly_fine@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    They have treated the waste water, so it isn’t dumping. The water is well below the recommended parameters for releasing water.

    There is nothing wrong with this. People are just freaking out because its “nuclear waste”, which causes people to be irrational.

    • lntl@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Idk why the downvotes, I’m actually curious about this. Do you know how the waste is treated? I have a some education in radioactive materials and it doesn’t seem like an easy problem to solve.

      • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        If you have some “education about radioactive materials” you’d know that the half-life of tritium is 12.5years and that it is a beta emitter. This type of radiation isn’t harmful unless ingested. You would also know that the water has been diluted to safe levels before being released in the ocean, and even after that dilution, it will also not be released all at once, further reducing the chance of re-concentration and making radiation poisoning impossible. Finally since this is tritium we are talking about it, it isn’t a bio-accumlator and if you did drink too much tritated water, the treatment would be to drink an increased amount of tap water.

        Since you are still just “asking questions,” about how Tritrated water is “treated” it kind of sounds like you don’t actually know about radioactive materials at all otherwise you would know about H3, i.e. tritium and wouldn’t be concerned about “treatment” only the concentration of the released water.

          • Maalus@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Cause you deserve it. You lie about your background and act as if you are “just asking questions” when in reality all you are doing to other people is saying “I’m an expert and treating this waste is impossible so how are they doing it”.

            • lntl@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Still with the nasty…

              No one deserves to be spoken to that way. Do better.

              I’m educated enough to know it’s not necessarily a trivial process. The “treating waste is impossible” schtick are your words, not mine.

              Let me get it straight. You’re telling us that:

              • beta emitters aren’t so bad
              • the treatment process (which is what I asked about) is dilution

              Is that right? Dilution is the only “treatment” applied before discharge?

              • blterrible@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                They settle out all of the heavier radioactive elements. They then dilute the remaining heavy water with additional water to drive the level of tritium to an acceptable level. It is then dumped into the ocean and rapidly mixes with the surrounding seawater. If you were to look at a map of ocean currents you’d see generally where it would go from there, but it doesn’t really matter because tritium isn’t really a significant concern. If they were dumping significant quantities of cobalt 60 you should care more, but they aren’t, so you shouldn’t.