Some of you may die, but that's a chance we're willing to take
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Not disagreeing on principle here, but I am not sure this is an apples to apples comparison. The Chernobyl meltdown caused the uncontrolled release of large amounts of radioactive cadmium. Fungi (unlike most plants) tend to be less discriminatory about what metals they pick up from the soil because they're capable of sequestering the harmful stuff in their cell walls. This isn't to say that bioaccumulation up the food chain doesn't also happen in the oceans (the mercury problem in fish is caused by releases from coal plants), but this is (a) much smaller, (b) treated to reduce the radioactive heavy metals, and (c) not into soil, where things have a chance to persist and accumulate.
You're right that this isn't an exactly viable comparison. Though there do seem to be signs that tritium too, is subject to biomagnification. I've posted a link below
Edit: for clarity, here's the link again. The main takeaway for me is that phytoplankton can make tritium bio-available and that this bio-available form of tritium is both getting bio-magnified up the food-chain and is entirely disregarded by current legislation, since the bio-available form of tritium is technically in a different chemical configuration. If I'm getting any of this wrong, feel free to correct me, everyone
I love getting reminded that I don’t actually know shit and that’s a very good reason to not be reactionary. Thank you, I gotta read into this a little more.
I have a vague background as a nuclear technician, (very far removed from that life) so I initially thought this was more reactionary behavior against nuclear energy. Nuclear powered ocean vessels also treat their water and release it into the ocean. Dilution is the solution sort of, but tritium becoming bio-available is not something I’ve heard mentioned here.
That's an interesting, read, thanks for sharing! For what it's worth, the study used massively higher doses of tritium than what's being released: 10 million becquerels/L in the study water (which is 1,000x the drinking water limit) compared with - per Reuters - 63 becquerels/L in the wastewater.
I stopped short of saying that I didn't think there would be environmental harm because it does seem like there's cause for concern, even if the tritium has a relatively short half life. But I don't know if the claims being made by opponents are justified.