Stop overreacting to Fukushima nuclear waste water release
Background
Recently, the Japanese government and the Fukushima Nuclear Plant decided to release nuclear waste water slowly into the ocean, which raises concerns from nearby countries (including China and Korea) and also even from some Japanese locals.
So, how dangerous is this actually? Let's take a deeper look.
How dangerous is it?
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has issued a report in last month (July 2023), stating that the controlled, gradual discharges into the ocean is "consistent with relevant international safety standards" and it has "negligible radiological impact", and this has been further confirmed by the United Nations.
That scientifically indicates that the entire procedure (of releasing the water) is in fact safe and is far from affecting the environment to a noticeable degree.
But people complained.
Many people are concerned about the safety of the water. There are concerns about how IAEA does not monitor how the water will be treated in the coming 30 years, especially from South Korea and China:
Even normal citizens can figure out that directly releasing the water polluted by having direct contact with the reactor core is different from the one without direct contact. Their source, type of radioactive materials they contain, and the difficulty processing them is absolutely different, and is definitely not comparable. Moreover, IAEA did not consider the liability of the facilities used to purify the polluted water, and they cannot ensure that all the contaminated water will comply to the standards. Japan is trying to "wash away" the wrong decision on releasing the nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean, by taking other nuclear power plants releasing nuclear-contaminated water under normal operation as an example, which is an act of hitting the science hat and creating a false impression in the international society.
This statement by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs is inaccurate to a few degrees. According to the same UN article:
“The IAEA has committed to be present before, during and after this process,” Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a video statement.
Which implies the IAEA will continuously monitor the procedure after issuing the report.
Regarding concerns on the radioactive materials, IAEA claims that the conservative estimation of the effect of the radioactive materials on humans shows that the procedure is of very low risks and is far from the international constraints:
Since the assessment was conducted based on conservative assumptions, there is no significant risk of underestimation. Any person living in the wider area would be far less affected by exposure than the representative person identified in the REIA (radiological environmental impact assessment). The REIA [15] provides an estimate of the committed effective dose to the representative person (for adult, child and an infant), ranging from 0.000002 (2E-06) to 0.00004 (4E-05) mSv/year. The results were much smaller than the dose constraint of 0.05 mSv per year. Furthermore, the results are significantly below the accepted 0.01 mSv threshold below which it is usually not recommended to conduct optimization. These results are largely due to the limits set by the Government of Japan for the discharge of ALPS treated water both in terms of tritium concentration and annual discharge limit for tritium. In order to minimize the impact on the surrounding environment and the reputational damage, Japan has set a maximum tritium concentration (1,500 Bq/L) for the discharge and a total annual tritium discharge limit (22 TBq per year).
[15]: TEPCO. Implementation Plan for Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station as Specified Nuclear Facility February 20 2023, Application Documents for Approval to Amend the Implementation Plan for Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Specified Nuclear Facility
Moreover, the waste water mostly only contains Tritium, an isotope of Hydrogen. Tritium has a half-life of 12.32 years only, which is much shorter than other contaminants which have already been filtered. This means that most Tritium will just decay half-way through the release of the water. Most of them will also go unnoticed under the assumption that the water is diluted correctly.
The 0.01 mSv threshold is also really really low:
(Note: "mSv" means "microsieverts")
The American limit results in a dose of 4.0 millirems (or 40 microsieverts in SI units) per year per EPA regulation 40CFR141, and is based on outdated dose calculation standards of National Bureau of Standards Handbook 69 circa 1963. The new dose calculation standards based on International Commission on Radiological Protection Report 30 and used in the NRC Regulation 10CFR20 results in a dose of 0.9 millirem per year at 740 Bq/liter (20,000 pCi/liter).[39] Four millirem per year is about 1.3% of the natural background radiation (roughly 3,000 μSv). For comparison, the banana equivalent dose (BED) is set at 0.1 μSv, so the statutory limit in the US is set at 400 BED.
[39]: Backgrounder on Tritium, Radiation Protection Limits, and Drinking Water Standards (Report). U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 15 March 2011. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
This means the tritium in the water released has scientifically and mathematically negligible effects on human bodies. The procedure of releasing the water should not be concerning at all if not also for the fact that the US had released a significant amount of tritium into the Ocean in 2003.
Since the calculation by IAEA/REIA already includes not only tritium by also other chemicals in the water (the IAEA report says the only chemical the nuclear plant could not filter out from the water is tritium, but just in case), statistically the calculation itself is a very concrete proof showing that the water is mostly if not entirely safe and I believe there is no justification required for the calculation.
How people reacted
In Hong Kong (where I live), misleading news (regarding how "dangerous" the procedure is) are spread and many people are so afraid of the release of the water to the point that supermarkets are now deprive of table salt. Wait, plot twist! Most of the people bringing suitcases to the supermarket just to buy table salt are people from the mainland according to rumours (which you can choose not to believe in, but it's still pretty funny), so I guess the Chinese media is probably going crazy trying to convince people that the waste water is really really dangerous (which it isn't). This ubiquitous phenomenon quickly got a nickname: 盲搶鹽. (lit. blind get salt, same pronunciation as 盲腸炎 appendicitis)
Partly I think this is kinda funny as I am participating in a very large joke (caused by maybe propaganda to some extreme) but I am also pretty concerned why people don't understand the fact that the water is safe.
Did education fail us?
Here comes a story. When mobile phones were invented where you can finally make wireless-calls, Hong Kong briefly went into a stage where some people were really really concerned whether they were safe. There were numerous rumours spreading over the city quickly saying that mobile phones emitted deadly radiations and pregnant women should not bring mobile phones. Obviously the rumours are now dead… Or maybe it got an upgrade and became the 5G radiation rumours. Well, the point is, the root cause of people think that the mobile phones emit deadly radiations is the lack of proper education regarding waves. Maybe people think that 5G waves are equivalent to x-rays? Who knows. But the fact is, 5G waves are far from being ionising. Anyhow, somehow the Hong Kong education (still) lacks curriculum about waves in daily lives. I remember seeing it briefly once in a Physics textbook, but as far as I know, it has never been used as a question in public exams. That means the government basically did nothing to improve people's awareness to how waves work in daily lives, which causes people to think that 5G radiation is dangerous. I wonder if having a sunbath is more dangerous than using 5G network, hmm.
In this case, it's not necessarily education's fault. Instead, people don't know how to research on these kinds of topics. By listening to only 1 side of the argument (newspapers, TV broadcasts, etc.), they take it for granted and believe, automatically with no questions asked, in the fact that the water dumping procedure is dangerous. This is not how information is supposed to be treated. In my opinion, this is an oversight of education — people don't understand how to do simple research when they were taught using only textbooks. This is FATAL because news in most countries (yes, everywhere in the world, from China to the US) are biased due to politics. If people don't research by themselves, they will end up with only biased opinions affected by the country (or really, the environment) while ignoring science and the truth. The Hong Kong government acknowledges the issue partially — works are performed to ensure that students receive other kinds of views on topics related to mainland China. However, as a student studying the new CS curriculum, I would say that this is far from being a perfect solution, and students need to understand that they cannot only trust information provided from only 1 source.
Example: Nuclear energy
Let's give a related example as to why education can be a "single point of failure". A great portion of the population probably thinks that nuclear energy is bad because:
Very expensive to build the nuclear power station
No good way to dispose the harmful radioactive wastes
Leakage of radioactive sources is disastrous
In fact, I copied the above 3 points from my chemistry textbook.
You can find out stats related to nuclear energy having bad reputation here:
https://sites.google.com/view/sourcesclimatenuclear/
That is partially a fallacy. First of all, other sources of energy actually cause more death tolls. You may know more by watching this Kurzgesagt video:
Sources: https://sites.google.com/view/sources-nuclear-death-toll/
Secondly, it is known that there are effective ways to process radioactive nuclear waste. You may read more from the sources below from Kurzgesagt:
#Radioactive waste, 2005
https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/ebs/ebs_227_en.pdf
As the authors of the survey emphasize the public opinion on nuclear energy contradicts the scientific consensus:
#Radioactive waste, 2005
https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/ebs/ebs_227_en.pdf
Quote: “First of all, eight out of ten respondents wrongly believe that all radioactive waste is very dangerous (79%). Next, 74% of respondents consider the disposal of low-level radioactive waste to be very risky and 71% perceive the same high level of risk for the transport of this type of waste.“
#Radioactive Waste Management, 2020
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-waste-management.aspx
Quote: “Safe methods for the final disposal of high-level radioactive waste are technically proven; the international consensus is that geological disposal is the best option.”
Like all energy-producing technologies, nuclear energy results in some waste products. There are three different types of nuclear waste, classified by their radioactivity: Low level waste, intermediate-level waste and highly contaminated waste.
Around 90% of the total waste volume is composed of tools and work clothing that is only lightly contaminated and contains only 1% of the total radioactivity. It […] doesn’t require special shielding such as concrete walls or protective clothing for the nuclear workers.
Roughly 7% is intermediate-level waste, such as used filters and steel components from the reactors. […] This kind of waste needs to be solidified in concrete or bitumen and is mostly buried in shallow repositories on the site.
So we can handle 97% of the nuclear waste quite well, but the real trouble starts with the remaining 3%. These 3% consists of the highly radioactive materials produced as a byproduct of the nuclear reactions that occur inside the reactors.
They come in two forms: Used reactor fuel and waste materials that remain after spent fuel is reprocessed. […]
Right after the nuclear material can’t be used anymore for fission, the waste products can be stored in a pool or in dry casks. In so-called spent fuel pools the material is put 12 meter deep underwater, where the short-lived isotopes are able to decay, reducing the ionising radiation. The water isolates the radioactive material and cools it down at the same time. But since the materials in the pools have been observed to degrade severely over time, the waste needs to be moved after 10 to 20 years.
Next the nuclear waste can be put into huge casks made of concrete and steel. Some argue that it can be stored in those casks for up to 100 years, but the casks could start cracking within 30 years or less.
After the nuclear waste has been cooled down, some of it can be reprocessed. In a series of chemical operations, plutonium and uranium can be separated from the nuclear waste and reused, but that is so expensive that it is only economically valuable when the uranium supply is low and prices are high.
All of these temporary solutions don’t solve the problem of long-term storage. Depending on which radioactive elements are used the half-life of this waste is between 24,000 years and 2 million years. In order to keep all the waste safe for such a long time, there have been several technologies suggested.
[…]
At the moment, the safest method we have is the so-called deep geological repository.
Hundreds of meters below the surface, the radioactive waste is put into huge drums of steel and concrete and is isolated by a combination of engineered and natural barriers like rock, salt and clay.
Still, there are many hazards regarding long-term storage. One of the biggest concerns is that the waste might affect the surrounding ecosystems. If not stored well, leaking radioactive waste can cause genetic problems for many generations of animals and plants. But several studies have shown that, if stored properly, no nuclear waste is able to leak into the environment.
[…]
But what we can say, taking all this into consideration is that air pollution from burning fossil fuels is of far greater threat for public health than deep geological repositories for nuclear waste, if a safe storage over a long is presupposed/assumed.
Since radioactive sources are protected and handled safely to such a degree and the harmful radioactive wastes can be reduced to a minimum, nuclear power stations are not as dangerous as most people think. But what about the cost? Unfortunately, since the technology required to build the power stations is lacking (because countries refuse to build them), costs are high, so countries don't want to build them. As you can see, this is unfortunately a negative feedback loop, but this does not end here — the countries refuse to build nuclear power stations because people think that they are dangerous and they will reject the proposals to build them, which means that no countries want to build them, and thus costs are high due to the lack of manpower in industries related to building nuclear power stations.
Distrust in science and technology
The above example also directly showcases how the science and tech industries have everything but yet enterprises and governments refuse to adapt them because either it's experimental or it's costly. Meanwhile with edgy technologies (like nuclear energy) which might have caused disasters before (like Chernobyl) might give a big fat bad reputation to the general public while the advantages are all under the grave unnoticed by everyone.
The distrust in science and technology by the general public cannot be solved as easily as one might think. Education itself is a liability that causes this. As new techs are developed at an insane speed, the general public should ought to receive education via convenient methods, such as TV programmes. But that only reveals another issue. Some knowledge is unfortunately behind a paywall. Students still need to pay tuition fees albeit the 12-year free education system in Hong Kong. This can also be reflected by the fact that some science journals/publishers require people to pay just to see the papers, and can be further reflected by how expensive college/university fees are.
Examples include how some tech-newbies I know refuse to switch to Linux because they think it won't work or it's hard to use Linux. When I asked if they had ever tried it, their usual respond would be no.
Other examples include how people just refuse to acknowledge that 5G is safe.
There is no solution
Well, at the very least it isn't really straightforward. We basically need to modify the school curriculum to make sure no false information is added, but that involves convincing the government what is right and what is wrong, and that's not an easy task, especially when the people working there only trust stuff they are used to, or, in an extreme case, they are simply stubborn.
Subsequently, students learning the curriculum with wrong or even misleading information will believe in what they've learnt, meaning that the correct information is never going to make it to the next generations.
The core issue lies really deep — in a world with the Internet full of right and wrong information, people should acquire the skill to research information and reason which side they should believe in. This skill set is far more useful than anything you learn in textbooks — you can just learn everything back by searching. Maybe that's what education is exactly lacking, and is exactly what it, and everyone on Earth, needs.
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