Gird your loins. There will be another round of scaremongering associated with the shuttered Fukushima nuclear power plant. For some, the concept of nuclear power is too scary to process.
The motivation for the coming round of alarmism is the pending release of water from the plant that contains tritium. Tritium is a radioactive molecule that is rarely formed in nature. It has a half-life of roughly 12 years.
The alarmists will point to 31,200 metric tonnes of water that will be dumped between now and next March. That is a lot of water, the alarmists will say. And it is.
But how much of that water is radioactive? How much of actual tritium is in that large volume?
About 2.1 grams. The radioactive potential of that amount is 760 TBq.
Again, they will point at that "T" and point out that it stands for "tera". 1 "tera" anything equals 1,000,000,000,000. That is a big number! Big numbers mean scary things will happen!
How about some context.
In 2018, the Bruce nuclear generation station located near Michigan's Great Lakes emitted 756 TBq of liquid tritium and 994 TBq of tritium contained in steam discharges. Total 2018 tritium emissions were 1,750 TBq.
Also in 2018, the French La Hague reprocessing plant emitted 11,400 TBq of tritium combined with water/liquid emissions. In 2020, South Korean nuclear power plants emitted 211 TBq of tritium in the water/liquid stream and another 154 TBq via steam.
All of those emissions continue on an annual basis without any documented negative environmental consequences. Diluting tritium and then disposing of it in a larger body of water is an accepted method with no known/documented risks.
Nuclear power is the only safe, reliable, and proven method for generating electricity. Don't let the scaremongers convince you otherwise.
