Reuss Griffiths Loc: Ravenna, Ohio

My daughter's first job as a newly graduated chemical engineer was working for the Savannah River Nuclear Plant (they didn't generate power). Her job was to concentrate radioactivity in water. Her section of the plant received water with low levels of radioactivity from other areas of the plant and concentrated the radioactivity in a series of stages before finally shipping it off to Hanford Washington for final disposal. This is how our government dealt with radioactive water. The Savannah River plant is no longer functional and are in the final stages of clean up themselves before final shutdown.

Dilutions is the solution to pollution does not apply here even though everything is radioactive to some extent due to radiation from uranium and other elements in earth's core.

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

All they need to do is get the Chernobyl Fungus that eats radioactivity.

Reuss Griffiths Loc: Ravenna, Ohio

There are a lot of reports of the short and long term effects of the Chernobyl disaster on people. Estimates of the death toll after 20 yrs approaches 3000 but there is much disagreement as to the accuracy of that number. Many precautions are taken to exclude people from the area for obvious health reasons.

What I've not seen are any reports of the effects on the local wildlife population. There's no way to limit their access to the site so their exposure must be many times greater than humans. The animals might be a perfect laboratory experiment to study the effects of radiation. Anybody heard anything about this?

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

There have been long-term studies of the flora and fauna in Fukushima. There are effects noted in the animals of the region and the plants, and not good ones.

petrochemist Loc: UK

I very much doubt tritium will be a significant factor here (yes there will be traces present).
From a nuclear plant you will get daughter nucleotides from the Uranium decay series, which ends in Lead.

With the exception of Radon all of these are solids which will remain on evaporation, allowing the concentrated residue to be disposed of as normal active waste (Probably buried down a disused mine in sealed containers).

In reality the best disposal route depends on how radioactive the water is. All of us are radioactive to some degree, if it's only a thousand times more radioactive than us dumping at sea could be acceptable (that depends on the chemical hazards) but in general dilution is not considered an appropriate way for disposing of hazardous waste.

With only a million gallons to dispose of dilution in the worlds oceans would give a very considerable reduction in concentrations. The eventual concentration of radioactive materials from this would probably be pretty insignificant, I'd expect lower than the naturally occurring concentrations from underwater volcanic vents etc.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Correct. We all have microplastics in our bodies, and it's unlikely that they do us any good. I could be interesting to examine human remains in the future - just bones and plastic.

Stephan G

Sidenote: "This month, the latest edition of the Body World Exhibition opened its doors in Heidelberg. "The Mirror of Time" collection builds off "Plastination," the original show founded by Gunther von Hagen back in 1977."

(Been to three shows from Body World over the years. Fascinating.)

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

AFAIK all other radionuclides produced by nuke plants are filterable to acceptable levels, except tritium. All nuclear plants release tritium, and the nuclear regulatory bodies have set acceptable levels. In this case dilution is the only answer. International standards for tritium in drinking water vary from 100 Bq/l in the EU to 30,000 Bq/l in Finland.

Here is a list of liquid effluent discharges from plants. Airborne releases are generally more significant

Mixed Fission and Activation Products
Iron (55)
Cobalt (58, 60)
Cesium (134, 137)
Chromium (51)
Manganese (54)
Zirconium (95)
Niobium (95)
Iodine (131, 133, 135)
Tritium Hydrogen (3)

Dissolved and Entrained Noble Gases
Krypton (85, 85m, 87, 88)
Xenon (131, 133, 133m, 135, 135m

It's clear that if there are structural problems with the plant (leaks, etc.) it is possible that many more radionuclides might get into the water. Judging from the situation in Fukushima, it is possible to filter highly contaminated water to acceptable levels. So the question remains: what is in that water being stored? It must be something above levels deemed safe for release.