Press Release – Science Media Centre

Japan plans to release treated radioactive water from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown into the Pacific Ocean in about two years. Water has been used to keep three reactors under control, and has been stored in water tanks that now …

Japan plans to release treated radioactive water from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown into the Pacific Ocean in about two years.

Water has been used to keep three reactors under control, and has been stored in water tanks that now hold about 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive water, enough for about 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The SMC asked experts to comment on whether the environment, human health, or New Zealand could be affected.

Dr Joe O’Callaghan, Coastal Physicist, NIWA, comments:

“Ocean gyres are a large system of ocean currents formed by global wind patterns and forces created by Earth’s rotation. In the Pacific Ocean there are two main ocean gyres – the North and South Pacific Gyres.

“Japan’s proximity to the North Pacific gyre means that treated outflows from the Fukushima plant would initially move northwards and continue in a clockwise circulation around the North Pacific Ocean. As the two Pacific gyres are separated by the Equator, they are essentially disconnected. So, we’d expect little or no impact of the Fukushima outflows in the South Pacific region or around New Zealand’s oceans.

“Ocean currents also flow several kilometres below the surface, like the global ocean conveyor belt. But since deep currents only flow northwards in the Pacific Ocean – through the Kermadec-Tonga trench and onwards through North Pacific abyssal waters, there is not expected to be any signals in the deep ocean either.”

No conflict of interest.

Dr David Krofcheck, Senior Lecturer in Physics, University of Auckland, comments:

“In its own form, this water could be dangerous to human health. But if there’s successful removal – maybe a second run-through the ALPS system that removes radioactive isotopes from water – then there’s hardly any risk at all from diluting this water and releasing it into the ocean again. I see very very minimal risk in that – get your Covid shot instead of worrying about this.

“But they do need to re-filter this water. It was originally hoped they would only have to do it once, but it looks like about 70 per cent of the water needs to be filtered again, according to the data I’m looking at from the Japanese TEPCO and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“That leaves the question about Carbon-14 brought up by Greenpeace. Carbon-14 is a very useful tool in science, it’s a radioactive form of carbon used to date ancient objects. But it comes from the atmosphere naturally, we’re bombarded by it daily and there’s gigatonnes of it already in the oceans. The Carbon-14 in the treated water is still a small amount compared to how much is already in the ocean, so I’m not worried about that. There are well-known technologies for removing Carbon-14 and that’s something Japan may or may not want to consider in the coming two years.”

No conflict of interest.

Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz
Original url