What Japan discharges is nuclear sewage, not nuclear wastewater, let alone nuclear-treated water.
Japan's Fukushima nuclear-polluted water is the water that has passed through the melted core of the nuclear power plant. This kind of polluted water is completely different from the discharge of normal nuclear power plant wastewater.
Nuclear wastewater is just the cooling water of the nuclear power plant, which is cross-circulated through the heat exchange system and will not come into direct contact with the uranium fuel that has generated electricity at all.
The radioactive substances in nuclear wastewater are usually only hydrogen isotope tritium, and the half-life of tritium is only 12.43 years.
In contrast, nuclear-contaminated water contains a large amount of radionuclides, such as carbon-14 and iodine-129, due to the melting of the core. These nuclides have no international precedents.
Therefore, nuclear sewage and nuclear wastewater are fundamentally different.
Japan only emphasizes that the content of tritium in nuclear sewage is low, which is obviously confusing.
In fact, Japan claims to filter nuclear-contaminated water, but the nuclear-contaminated water still contains a small amount of tritium, as well as a small amount of carbon-14 and iodine-129.
Japan swears that the nuclear-contaminated water after treatment is only tritium, which is wrong, and there are still other radionuclides.
But we also need to pay attention, although Japan's discharge of nuclear sewage will indeed bring long-term harm, the impact on us in the short term will not be too great.
Japan's TEPCO discharges nuclear sewage through a 1-kilometer subsea tunnel nearby.
After the nuclear sewage is discharged into the sea, it first enters the North Pacific Gyre, and after a long circle, it will finally enter our first island chain. At this time, these radioactive substances have been greatly diluted, and the short-term impact on us will not be serious. very big.
There is a simulation of the diffusion process of nuclear sewage discharge in Japan. After the nuclear sewage is discharged, it takes 240 days to reach the coast of China, and after 1200 days, it will reach the coast of North America and cover almost the entire North Pacific Ocean.
Although the arrival time in North America is later, if we distinguish between high concentration and low concentration, high concentration will appear earlier on the west coast of North America.
The simulation shows that on the 2400th day, the waters along the southeastern coast of China mainly showed a light pink with a low concentration, while the seas to the west of North America were basically covered by red with a high concentration.
It can be seen that Japan's discharge of nuclear-contaminated water will do more harm to the United States within 7 years.
The German Marine Scientific Research Institute pointed out that Japan's discharge of nuclear sewage will affect the United States and Canada in three years, and spread to global oceans in ten years. It is inevitable that the whole world will be affected by radioactive materials.
Therefore, although Japan's discharge of nuclear sewage has little impact on us in the short term, Japan has continued to discharge it for as long as 30 years. After the long-term enrichment of fish and algae, it is estimated that the long-term harm of Japan's nuclear sewage discharge will begin to appear in ten years.
And as time goes on, this harmful effect will become more and more serious.
This long-term harm cannot be ignored.
Therefore, we don't need to panic about this matter in the short term, but this long-term harm is worth worrying about.
