[bob_theslob646]

>Fukushima is aweful for the nearby region and still a cautionary tale. But it didn't poison the whole world.

I would be careful with that last statement because seafood from Japan is global.

Only time will tell the true impact of Fukushima's radioactive water.

"More than 1 million tons of radiation-laced water is already being kept on-site in an ever-expanding forest of hundreds of hulking steel tanks—and so far, there’s no plan to deal with them."[1]

12 US gallons = 100 lbs and 1 million tons is equal to 2.4 million gallons

https://www.wired.com/story/fukushimas-other-big-problem-a-m...

[DennisP]

"Tons of radioactive water" is a silly measurement. The water itself isn't radioactive, it has radioactive material mixed in with it. If you quadrupled the amount of water, you would have 4 million tons of radioactive water but it'd be the same amount of radioactivity, just more diluted.

[squirrelicus]

It's even sillier because "radioactive water" isn't a measurement of the amount of radiation or a description of the decay process that reduces the danger over time

[exrook]

Just a correction on this, 1 million tons is equal to around 240 million gallons [0], which is roughly the volume of 362 olympic sized swimming pools[1].

[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+million+tons+of+water... [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(1+million+tons+of+wate...

[greenshackle2]

For perspective, that's 4 olympic swimming pools worth of water. It's not a small amount but it's not enormous as far as volumes of liquid goes.

[anonymouz]

A typical olympic pool (assumed 50m x 25m x 2m; the depth actually isn't standarized), contains 2500m^3 of water. 1m^3 of water has a mass of 1t (in typical conditions).

So 10^6 tons of water corresponds to 400 olympic swimming pools. That's quite a lot of water (still not much compared to the volume of the oceans, of course).

[greenshackle2]

You're right, I was going off the parent. They made an error somewhere, 1 million tons is 240 million gallons, not 2.4 millions.

[newnewpdro]

It's worse than that; > 100 tons of groundwater contaminated by the ongoing crisis still run to the ocean daily. [1] They've made progress in reducing the amount (it used to be hundreds of tons daily) but it's still a problem. Now there's talk of dumping what's been stored into the ocean anyways.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/remediating-fukushim...

[vidarh]

100 tons is roughly 100 cubic metres, or 1 cube of 4.65m. In a year it's a cube of roughly 33.2m each side. Given that the concern seems to be tritium, with a half-life of 12 years, if you want to reduce radiation to about 1/1000th, you'd need 10 halvings, so 120 such cubes. That's a lot, but if you were to build containment basins of "only" 1 depth, it'd be a basin 365 meters each side and 33.2m deep. That's not nothing, but it's likely also excessive.

[antris]

> They've made progress in reducing the amount (it used to be hundreds of tons daily) but it's still a problem

What exactly is the problem that it is causing?

[newnewpdro]

Are you asking me what is the problem with 100+ tons of reactor-contaminated groundwater effluent entering the sea on a daily basis? On the surface this seems like a weak attempt at a strawman, please clarify.

edit: s/irradiated/reactor-contaminated/

[antris]

Yes, I'm asking that. Because all sea water is irradiated anyway, the effects depend on the amount of radiation in the water. So, what problems is this water entering the sea causing?

[newnewpdro]

My understanding is not all isotopes are equally hazardous. The stuff coming with the reactor-contaminated water is particularly harmful to the marine environment and people of Japan, and not normally present at such levels in the surrounding waters.

The half-life as I understand it is relatively short for the especially harmful stuff, but that's not so helpful if leaks are ongoing.

[chlvsl]

Yes, he is, and I am as well. First of all, irradiated doesn't mean radioactive. Most food in the US is irradiated for health purposes before sale at grocery stores.

How is it contaminated? What's the distribution of contaminants? Do they actually have a significant effect?