Conca opined in late 2022 that the trouble with tritium is that there is no trouble with tritium. At any level outside the laboratory, either experimental or manufacturing, tritium is harmless. Every year, we routinely release millions of gallons of slightly tritiated water to the ocean, large lakes, and large rivers from almost every commercial nuclear reactor in the world, and have done so for decades, all in accordance with globally accepted nuclear safety standards. And no adverse effects on the environment or humans have ever been seen.
"This is not surprising, since more tritium is created in Earth’s upper atmosphere than is created by commercial reactors. Natural (cosmogenic) tritium is continuously created in the upper atmosphere, mostly by the reaction:
14N + n → 3H + 12C,
which forms 70 quadrillion becquerels, or approximately 2 million curies, of tritium (3H) every year."
(https:irsn.fr/EN/Research/publications documentation/radionuclides-sheets/environment/Pages/Tritium-environment.aspx).
Tritium then rains out into surface waters from which we end up drinking or fishing. Even more important, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institute
(https:waterencyclopedia.com/Po-Re/Radionuclides-in-the-Ocean.html),
there are 74.1 sextillion becquerels of potassium-40, rubidium-87, and many other higher-energy emitters already in the world’s oceans.
But lately, Fukushima has brought the topic of tritium in the ocean to the public’s eye and, well, the horror and outrage have been quite a spectacle to witness. It’s as if the public just realized no one is recycling the glass bottles they so carefully wash and put in the recycle bin day after day.
A large commercial nuclear power reactor produces about 20,000 curies (~2 g) of tritium per year, most of which is incorporated into the nuclear fuel and coolant/control materials such as boron. Some enters the water, replaces an H in H2O to become HTO, and can leave the reactor in amounts dependent on the reactor design.
Nuclear power plants routinely and safely release diluted concentrations of tritiated water.
"These authorized releases are closely monitored by the utilities and reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the information is made available to the public on the NRC’s website. Each commercial nuclear power plant is required to submit two reports annually: one radioactive environmental operating report and another on radioactive effluent release. Some years, there are no effluent releases from an operating nuclear power plant, but a typical release can range anywhere from thousands to millions of gallons per year, with a total tritium amount of only 10 curies or so."
So what is the effect of this discharge on humans, the body of water into which the tritiated water is discharged (usually the ocean), or the ecosystem?
Read on for the responses .....
Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-
