I worked in the naval nuclear power part of the navy in 1970 to 1976. At the time, i thought it was a good way to generate power. Never thought much about the ramifications of getting rid of the stuff when we are done with it.
Then Chernobyl came along. Didn't think too much of it. Then 3 Mile Island came along, my eyebrows got raised a couple of feet when a guy i knew who was still in the industry explained to me what had happened. Don't ask me now, i don't remember any of it. And then Fukushima happened about 10 years ago.
They always say the 3rd times the charm. This is the 3rd time. Right now Fukushima is set to dump about 1,000,000 tons of treated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. That is about a metric shitton of gallons.Can you say bad idea?
We used to do that on the ship, dump about 10,000 gallons or so of radioactive water into the ocean, on a fairly regular basis. What do you suppose all that does to the life in the ocean? And now about 1M tons will be discharged.
I say it is time to shut down all nuclear reactors on the planet. I guess that makes me a greeniee. I want to Save The Planet!
Funny, Homer Simpson never seems to have a problem with reactors.
ReplyDeleteWhen i was on the ship in the 70's, we had a few homer simpson types. One guy was the shutdown reactor operator one day. He and the ensign on watch were doing a procedure. The reactor cooling pumps were tagged out, a big red sign was over the start button. This guy actually lifted the sign over the start button, started the pump. I was the chief shutdown rover that day. When they announced over the intercom they were starting up the pump i called in and said i thought the pumps were locked out. You should have heard the oh shit come over the intercom.
DeleteHow anything that generates toxic waste that remains toxic for centuries can even BE called
ReplyDeleteClean is beyond me.
That is my thought exactly.
Deletepeople hear "radio active" and their minds turn off. it's tritium, H3, that is the contaminut. if tritum is such a major hazard in the enviornment how come they are selling it in amazon??
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/tritium/s?k=tritium
That may be so. But i doubt it. I doubt they will take either the time or the money to clean the water.
DeleteCannon, while tritium has its uses, the differences in both volume and concentration between the tiny amount in glow in the dark markings and the concentrated contaminants in that waste water are magnitudes of order apart. The millions of gallons they plan to dispose of will be massively diluted (down to 2.5% concentration) before dumping, yet still be enough to poison entire fisheries.
DeleteFred's reply is correct that this is a matter of saving time and money. They already know that the correct solution is to build evaporation plants nearby to dispose of the water, they simply don't want to spend the money. It's cheaper and easier to bribe IAEA officials than to handle this the right way. Pisses me off because I know enough of Japanese history and culture to see how far they have fallen.
Sorry, I didn't mean 2.5% concentration, I meant 2.5% of the maximum permitted dosage.
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