I mean, Yoon is right on this. Tritium is a very, very low level beta-emitter, and at the concentrations they’re releasing (less than 1500 Bq/L, ~4E-8 Ci/L), drinking nothing but water contaminated at that level for an entire year would yield a dose of less than 4 mrem (based on the NRC math that 60,900 pCi/L for a year yields a dose of 4mrem). For context, 4 mrem (40 μSv) is the amount of exposure you receive in a flight from NYC to LA. That is damn near a rounding error on the average yearly exposure to members of the public.
But people gotta be scared because Joe Public doesn’t really understand radiation, and fear sells.
Japan also literally dug a giant cave under the sea bed they are slowly draining the water into very slowly. It literally will have no contact with sea life. All of this fear mongering is incredibly stupid, and demonstrates that it doesn’t matter how much effort you go through to do something safely.
If Japan wanted to be beyond reproach, they would have held the wastewater for a few more years. The discharge will take decades anyway, so it’s not like the risk profile has been reduced.
What difference would a few years make to public opinion?
Half life of most of these things isn’t that long, so you could slash the concentrations to the point that you could drink straight out of the tank eventually.
The half life of tritium is 12 years, and they were on the verge of running out of storage space, as well as space to put more storage. And you can still drink it straight from the tank today with zero bad effects.
They already have. What’s the correct amount of time to hold it?
Get out of here with that math proving that the amount of radiation is negligible!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
SEOUL, Sept 1 (Reuters) - A majority of South Koreans are worried about Japan’s discharge of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea despite efforts by their government to allay fears, a poll published on Friday showed.
President Yoon Suk Yeol has led a campaign to ease public concern and encourage consumption of seafood.
Despite such efforts, South Korean environmental groups and many members of the public are alarmed and Yoon’s disapproval rating has risen to the highest in months, a Gallup Korea poll of 1,002 people showed.
“Half of those who identify as conservative and supportive of the government … also expressed concern,” Gallup Korea said.
Yoon’s disapproval ratings rose to 59%, up two percentage points from a week ago, to a 16-week high.
Yoon has pledged 80 billion won ($60.6 million) this year to promote seafood consumption and has vowed to tackle what he called “fake news” about the release.
The original article contains 313 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 50%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
According to https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abc1507, the variation of other radioactive isotopes in Fukushima wastewater is rather large between tanks: while tanks are on average within legal limits, different tanks may have different quantities of these radioactive isotopes that bioaccumulate in fish.
Moreover research into bioaccumulation of radioactive isotopes is rather limited (because, y’know, people don’t usually dump nuclear waste into the environment), so it’s really not super well established how fish process these things.
Plus, Tepco’s track record of not cutting corners isn’t looking very good… But this will save Tepco and the Japanese government billions of dollars, so I guess go them?
Sorry but capitalism is a death cult. The pandemic taught us that. Just because the powers that be want to throw money at messaging to tell us it’s safe doesn’t mean it’s safe. I’m gonna need more than that before I order any 해물탕
You’re mostly right, but his particular thing actually is safe. The water they are releasing is very very slightly more radioactive than normal water, but it’s so diluted it is harmless. As said by another commenter, if you only drank the water they are releasing you would have the equivalent extra radiation exposure as a flight across the US, or an x-ray or 2. And they are releasing it slowly into the entire ocean, it legitimately will be safe.
Capitalism is a death cult. But what were they supposed to do? Hold it so it seeps into the water table? Shoot it into space? This is the only logical explanation.
I’m so tired of seeing the word capitalism, I feel like maybe 3% of the time you fuckers actually know what it even is in proper context.
if you’re sick of hearing about it, that sounds like a You-Problem
Korean politicians cater to business interests at the cost to the citizens.
you canmot trust someone who prioritizes protecting the market forces for the rich to make good decisions for the poor.
or are 채벌 not capitalist now
Good thing there are other groups, international bodies, all backing up what Japan, not Korea, has stated since day 1.
Go touch grass.
Random insult is cool. That aside, yes! You’re right! That’s exactly what I’m saying: I would need to hear it from someone other than a politician. That perspective is worthless. Is this really that controversial of a point?
You smell like a shoe. (since we’re just adding random snark to the ends of our otherwise decent messages)
Hello, just a minor correction. It’s not 채벌 but 재벌.
Thank you, awesome to see more Korean speakers on Lemmy
