Japan started releasing treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, a polarising move that prompted China to announce an immediate blanket ban on all aquatic products from Japan.
China is “highly concerned about the risk of radioactive contamination brought by… Japan’s food and agricultural products,” the customs bureau said in a statement.
The Japanese government signed off on the plan two years ago and it was given a green light by the U.N. nuclear watchdog last month. The discharge is a key step in decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi plant after it was destroyed by a tsunami in 2011.
This is tritiated water, that is water with tritium (aka hydrogen-3 , regular hydrogen [a proton] with two additional neutrons) in place of regular hydrogen.
Tritium has a half life of 12 years. The incident was in 2011, so there’s been one half life already. The remaining tritium will be diluted with seawater and naturally decay over a few more half lives until it’s indistinguishable from background radiation.
Edit: the decay product is helium and an electron +and strictly speaking a neutrino, but those don’t really interact with much so we can ignore it). Nothing to really worry about!
Makes me wonder, what if they just let it sit for another 20 years and then recapture the helium to sell it or something?
Thanks for the knowledge.