Re:Japan nuclear body says radioactive water at Fukushima an...
by ChuckMcM on Monday August 05, 2013 @02:13PM
(#6161771)
Ah yes, there is that. And in fact a bit of searching turns up this is probably what Reuters was reporting [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/08/03/national/huge-le...]
I had originally dismissed Tritium as a candidate for the contamination because its nominally only in the reactor water and the Reuter's article talked about 'groundwater' (which is the name nominally given to water that accumulates in aquifers as a result of soil percolation).
Apparently TEPCO is losing control of the reactor coolant water which is a different thing.
That said, Tritium [1] isn't a particularly "bad" agent as it decays into Helium3 (great for fusion reactors if you've got one :-) and then floats away.
What? Tritium is an unstable hydrogen isotope that is radioactive, no matter what molecule it is found in. Combine that with acid-base chemistry which revolves around the disassociation of hydrogen from water and that tritium can end up as a beta emitter anywhere in the body, including in actual strands of DNA [1]. What radioactive isotopes the water carries as a solute is irrelevant to the presence of tritium in the molecules.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11130944