No One Knows What to Do with Fukushima’s Endless Tanks of Radioactive Water

Re:No One Knows What to Do with Fukushima’s Endless Tanks of... by stretchwithme on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @10:02PM (#9689624)

Freeze it and drop it in an antarctic glacier that will take a long time to melt.

Bury where there's already plenty of radioactivity. It does occur in nature, I hear.

The more radioactive it is, the shorter the half-life, right?

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Re:No One Knows What to Do with Fukushima’s Endless Tanks of... by krschultz on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @10:13PM (#9689667)

The half life is 12.3 years. If the amount of water was not growing it wouldn't be a huge problem. The tanks they are building will probably last at least 40+ years before having to be replaced, at which point we're talking about water that is not all that dangerous. If you release a tiny bit at a time it shouldn't be a problem.

However the water keeps accumulating. I don't think that part is sustainable. Until they fix the root cause of a seemingly endless amount of water that needs to be stored, this is going to be a problem.

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Re:No One Knows What to Do with Fukushima’s Endless Tanks of... by mirimir on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @10:18PM (#9689686)

The half-life of Tritium is 12.3 years. So as long as substantially everything with longer half-life has been removed, storage for a century or so would suffice.

Maybe put it in a bunch of large bags and tow it to Antarctica. But you'd need to avoid the bits that are already collapsing.

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