Worrying about Fukushima radiation is just bananas

It was one of us who first did the calculation comparing the radiation release from those stricken Fukushima reactors to global banana consumption. Further calculations pointed out that worries over bioaccumulation in fish were similarly nonsense. The claim was not - is not - that radiation is nothing to worry about. It’s that when worrying we need to think about how much is there? At which point, given that the universe itself is radioactive, we can place it in that spectrum between no worries and flee for the hills. Given that the fish concentrations were, at their peak, around that of one single dried banana chip we’re at the no worries end here.

This seems not to have convinced absolutely everyone:

Japan must work with the Pacific to find a solution to the Fukushima water release issue – otherwise we face disaster

Henry Puna

Based on our experience with nuclear contamination, continuing with ocean discharge plans is simply inconceivable

Ocean discharge is one of the few sensible things to be done here actually.

The water under discussion has already been filtered. We are not talking of releases of plutonium, uranium, caesium and so on. Rather, it’s the tritium in the molecules of the water itself. The Pacific Ocean already contains substantial amounts of such, as does all water. The release, if it happens, will make no measurable difference whatsoever to those naturally existing levels.

It’s easy to check back on this. All those hopes of fusion power, unlimited energy and so on. The fuel will be seawater suitably processed. Because all seawater does contain both deuterium and tritium which are the fuels for the fusion process. QED, it’s there already, as evidenced by all those articles shouting that if fusion works then we can power the world on mere seawater.

It’s also true that any such release would flood the oceans with less radioactivity than one single coal fired plant already does. We really are at the no worries end.

All of this is obvious to anyone who can keep track of the zeroes in a calculation - or grasps scientific notation - so that leaves us with the question of why are people shouting about it? If we were cynics we might mutter something about politicians, bureaucrats and NGOs setting up a couple of decades worth of very important meetings over sushi and whisky at someone else’s expense. We are not, of course, cynics.

But let us be positive here, helpful. One obvious solution is simply to take the tops off the tanks on sunny days. Evaporation will take care of the problem. Or, think along those lines of fusion power. The entire complaint here is that we’ve water already enriched in tritium. As and when fusion works - that 50 years of course - then we will want to have water enriched in tritium to power it. Just as with that thorium that so many minerals processors have been putting by for the now arrived day then thorium reactors start getting filled up, allow the energy production system to eat the supposed pollution.

The only problem with that final suggestion is that the Fukushima “radioactively polluted” water is so low in tritium enrichment that it doesn’t, in fact, get us anywhere in trying to fuel a fusion reactor. Which is another one of those proofs that we’re at the entirely “no worries” end of our spectrum, isn’t it.

Pull the plug on this discussion, it’s nonsense to worry about these trivial levels of radiation.