No detectable amount of tritium has been found in fish samples taken from waters near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, where the discharge of treated radioactive water into the sea began a month ago, the government said Monday.

Tritium was not detected in the latest sample of two olive flounders caught Sunday, the Fisheries Agency said on its website. The agency has provided almost daily updates since the start of the water release, in a bid to dispel harmful rumors both domestically and internationally about its environmental impact.

The results of the first collected samples were published Aug. 9, before the discharge of treated water from the complex commenced on Aug. 24. The water had been used to cool melted nuclear fuel at the plant but has undergone a treatment process that removes most radionuclides except tritium.

      • bobman@unilem.org
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        1 year ago

        Woah, it’s almost like the universe didn’t give us easily accessible energy for doing nothing.

        Wow. Let me know when oil doesn’t need to be extracted, refined, and doesn’t produce waste.

        • derpgon@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          If you have 100x emissions, but 1000x the efficiency of the fuel (numbers may be overblown), then it’s still better for the environment.

          Nuclear waste is probably the biggest issue, as we have to take care of the storage site.

          However, we could always either repurpose it or yeet it into space, away from any other close planet collision course.

          • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Nuclear waste is probably the biggest issue, as we have to take care of the storage site.

            Newer reactor designs are able to consume nuclear waste and use it as fuel. Look up breeder reactors. If we want to minimize nuclear waste, we need to build more reactors ironically.

          • lud@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            While yeeting things into space sounds cool, I am sceptical of the viability of that strategy.

            Putting things into space is very expensive and putting them in a solar orbit is even more expensive.

            Isn’t nuclear waste also really heavy? And guess what that means, it’s getting more expensive.

            It also isn’t very environmentally friendly to send shit into space and of course even less friendly considering how heavy nuclear waste is.

            • Dave.@aussie.zone
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              1 year ago

              In my opinion, they should find a nice, stable continental plate and in the middle of that, drill some relatively small diameter boreholes. Drill them ten or twenty kilometres apart to a depth that exercises our current technology, drop sealed waste into the bottom of said holes, top them off to 200m below the surface with concrete, and then backfill the rest with dirt.

              After that, remove all evidence of anything ever being there on the surface.

              If you have the technology to drill a hole 3-4km deep then you have also the tech to detect radioactive material.

              Small diameter boreholes that kind of distance apart are basically undetectable by geophysical survey with our current technology so nothing in particular would ever be seen.

              The quantity of worldwide high level radioactive waste that can’t be reprocessed could easy be disposed of in this manner.

              • Obi
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                1 year ago

                The high tech equivalent of a cat burying their shit. While I like the idea of yeeting stuff into space, this is also beautifully simple.

                I remember talks of building places with the use of symbols or other non-linguistic messaging to keep future populations at bay, I think that was in Finland or something.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        You were downvoted because you told the truth about nuclear power, not because people thought you were responding to a question that wasn’t asked.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          They were downvoted for telling a half truth. Technically true, but ignoring the context that makes it a good thing. Sure, it needs to be extracted, refined, and (to be clean) contained. All energy sources need the same, except dirty energy at least doesn’t contain their waste.