Nearly three times more marine lives died in tritium water to be discharged

Photo: Dead abalone in tritium-contaminated water in Tepco’s experimental environment. The brown crack is evident on its shell. (From Tepco’s twitter)

 

Since October of 2022, Tepco has been implementing the breeding experiment of marine life in normal seawater and the water contaminated with tritium, which is planned to be discharged to the Pacific. Currently, flounder and abalone are monitored.

According to Tepco’s record, 2.6 times more abalone died in the tank with the tritium water.
From the 3rd of October, 2022 to the 20th of January, 2023, 29 abalones have been reportedly confirmed to be dead in the contaminated seawater, which include 1,500 Bq/L of tritium. On the contrary, as few as 11 abalones died in the same period of time in the normal seawater.

Tepco announced the significant difference of abalones’ survival rates is due to the density in each tank. At the moment of the 14th of December, 2022, 308 abalones were living in the tank with the normal seawater, while 384 abalones were living in the tank with tritium-contaminated water. However, the sizes of the tanks are not disclosed. Also, it is unclear why Tepco did not set every tank in the same conditions as the control group and treatment group.
Approximately 1,150 Bq/L of tritium was detected from abalone by the time when 24 hours had passed since it was moved into the tritium-contaminated water. The tritium density in abalone slowly increased up to 144 hours after the relocation, nevertheless Tepco interrupted the tritium density measurement to conclude the biological concentration wasn’t observed.

 

 

https://www.tepco.co.jp/decommission/information/newsrelease/breedingtest/pdf/2022/202212.pdf

https://www.tepco.co.jp/decommission/information/newsrelease/breedingtest/pdf/2023/20230123.pdf

 

 

About this site

This website updates the latest news about the Fukushima nuclear plant and also archives the past news from 2011. Because it's always updated and added live, articles, categories and the tags are not necessarily fitted in the latest format.
I am the writer of this website. About page remains in 2014. This is because my memory about 311 was clearer than now, 2023, and I think it can have a historical value. Now I'm living in Romania with 3 cats as an independent data scientist.
Actually, nothing has progressed in the plant since 2011. We still don't even know what is going on inside. They must keep cooling the crippled reactors by water, but additionally groundwater keeps flowing into the reactor buildings from the broken parts. This is why highly contaminated water is always produced more than it can circulate. Tepco is planning to officially discharge this water to the Pacific but Tritium is still remaining in it. They dilute this with seawater so that it is legally safe, but scientifically the same amount of radioactive tritium is contained. They say it is safe to discharge, but none of them have drunk it.

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