Nuclear wastewater ≠ nuclear wastewater!

What's done can't be undone! What shouldn't be done is done!

At 12 noon local time on August 24, 2023, Japan officially launched the discharge of nuclear sewage into the sea despite multiple objections.

According to the interim press conference held by the Tepco on the same day, the amount of nuclear contaminated water discharged on the 24th is expected to be 200 to 210 tons, and the daily discharge situation will be announced the next day. The first phase of the discharge will discharge about 460 tons per day for 17 days, totaling about 7,800 cubic meters of nuclear-contaminated water.

These emissions will continue for at least another 30 years!

At present, in order to protect our lives, health and safety, China has taken necessary measures to announce a complete suspension of imports of Japanese seafood.

In the official documents of the Japanese government and Tepco, both insist on referring to the water in the Fukushima storage tanks as "treated nuclear wastewater", which is actually suspected of misleading the public.

Let its discharged "nuclear sewage" and "nuclear waste water" link to reduce the impact of the nuclear sewage discharge to the sea, but China and most countries, international organizations have called it "nuclear contaminated water".

What's the difference? What else can be done with nuclear sewage besides discharging it into the sea?

Part.1 "Nuclear Wastewater and Sewage"

According to China Daily website, there is a word difference between nuclear sewage and nuclear waste water, but there is a big difference.

01 Concepts

"Nuclear wastewater" refers to water contaminated with nuclear fuel, such as those produced in a nuclear leakage accident with highly radioactive materials, including groundwater, water in rivers, lakes or oceans, or cooling water in direct contact with nuclear fuel.

"Nuclear wastewater" means the wastewater generated by a nuclear power plant in the course of its normal daily activities, used for cleaning, dusting, desalting, etc., or water used to cool critical parts of a nuclear power plant.

This waste water does not come into contact with radioactive materials in nuclear reactors, has low levels of radioactivity, and can be discharged through pipes after strict treatment.

02 Radioactivity

Nuclear waste water mainly contains the radioactive isotope of hydrogen tritium, its half-life is 12.3 years, tritium has a low radioactive intensity, and oxygen combined to form tritium oxide, into the biological body or the environment.

After nuclear wastewater is treated in accordance with safety standards and regulations, it can be discharged into the environment in accordance with regulations, and the impact on the ecosystem and human health is relatively small. (However, it still contains some radioactive materials, such as long-term/large discharge, which can cause cumulative effects on the environment)

Nuclear wastewater contains not only tritium, but also a large number of other untreated radioactive elements, such as carbon-14, cobalt-60 and strontium 90. They are extremely radioactive and dangerous.

Once the radioactive elements in the nuclear sewage enter the ocean, "carcinogenic, teratogenic, mutagenic" is what we will have to deal with in the future.

03 Processing Methods

There are five ways to treat nuclear sewage: in addition to discharging it into the sea, it is also turned into water vapor and discharged into the atmosphere, into the deep underground, water electrolysis treatment, solid state and buried in the ground.

But drainage is the cheapest of these options, estimated at only 3.4 billion yen. Sea discharge is not a choice for Japan under the shortage of funds, some media reports, the Japanese Foreign Ministry plans to spend 70 billion yen to do public relations expenses, to cover up the negative public opinion of sea discharge.

Nuclear contaminated water is highly radioactive and dangerous, so it needs to be treated in a variety of ways to reduce its radioactive intensity and volume, and to solidify or stabilize it for safe storage or disposal.

There are many patents related to nuclear contaminated water treatment in our country, and we hope to have more advanced technologies to resist the coming nuclear pollution in the future.

For example, "Mobile radioactive wastewater treatment equipment" patent (public number: CN101229949B), which won the China Patent Award and Tianjin Patent Award, provides a mobile radioactive wastewater treatment equipment that can quickly treat a large amount of radioactive wastewater and can move, and solves the contradiction between low efficiency of nuclide interception and adsorption and miniaturization under large flow conditions. At the same time, the problems of integration and protection of various technologies of mobile radioactive wastewater treatment equipment are solved.

The utility model "an environmentally friendly device for rapidly evaporating water and liquid" can effectively treat sewage and nuclear waste water, prepare pure water, and cool the surrounding environment. Large-scale use can also effectively improve the urban heat island phenomenon, increase the content of water in the atmosphere, increase precipitation, and alleviate the trend of global warming.

Water and liquid 5 moisten absorbent 3 and evaporating layer 1, and evaporate on the surface of evaporating layer 1, which is more than 100 times faster than the evaporation rate of free water; Floating evaporator 12 Floating on the surface of the water using the capillary phenomenon of water replenishment, hanging evaporator using water gravity flow and capillary phenomenon of water replenishment, without control can run.

Patent "An adsorbent for highly efficient absorption of cesium ions and its preparation method and application" (public number: CN115554993A), provides a convenient one-step solvent method to prepare an adsorption material that can efficiently and reliably remove and solidify cesium ions. The invented NI-COPBAS adsorbent has excellent cesium removal efficiency, manifested as fast removal speed, large cesium enrichment capacity, high ion screening function and adsorption selectivity for Cs.

Nuclear waste water has low radioactivity and low risk, so it can be treated by simpler methods to meet discharge standards or reuse standards.

Commonly used radioactive precipitation, ion exchange, concentration and evaporation, reverse osmosis, photocatalytic oxidation and other methods to remove tritium or other trace radioactive substances.

For "nuclear wastewater" related patent applications, there are nearly 4,000 worldwide, Japan alone accounted for 24%, in the field of technology, the largest number of patents is about "treatment of radioactive contaminated materials; And its decontamination device (IPC classification number: G21F9/00) "related patents, with Toshiba and Hitachi Group as the main applicants.

China also has more than 100 patents related to "nuclear wastewater", mainly from universities and enterprises.

However, in terms of "nuclear waste disposal", China has a technology that is coveted by all major powers, that is, "Star 2".

It is a device developed in China for the work of nuclear power plants, lead-based nuclear reactor zero power device, mainly used in the work of nuclear power plants, not only the use of nuclear fuel efficiency to 95%, but also the waste generated after the consumption of nuclear fuel, recycling.

The lead in the spacecraft not only deradiates the waste, but also converts the energy it releases back into electricity.

Here we have to mention the "ADS transmutation system", proposed in the 1990s, ADS is the transmutation of radionuclide waste, effective use of nuclear resources and nuclear energy production device.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has included its transmutation reactor in a new nuclear energy system called "Emerging Nuclear Energy systems for Nuclear waste Transmutation and energy generation."

China is also the first country in the world to carry out the development of ADS system large-scale engineering project. Qixingmingii was first critical at the end of 2016 by the China Institute of Atomic Energy and the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Regarding ADS transmutation system, there are more than 240 patents in China, and the applicant (institution tree) is mainly Chinese Academy of Sciences, involving reactors, accelerators, bismuth alloys, spallation targets and other fields.

And this does not mean that it can completely solve the serious ecological problems caused by the discharge of nuclear sewage in Japan, after all, we have to face a large number of radioactive elements of nuclear sewage, rather than nuclear waste water generated by nuclear power plants.

We have enough reason to believe that our country has advanced technical strength to reduce the actual impact of the sea discharge as much as possible, and what we can do now is to remain firmly opposed to nuclear sewage discharge into the sea and establish a sense of protection.

I believe that countries that create ecological crises will also usher in due punishment, but the current damage to the ocean is irreversible, and will be returned to human beings in the future, there is no regret medicine to eat.

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