Whatever Happened to the 150,000 Tons of Radioactive Waste Stored Under the Atlantic Ocean? (sciencealert.com) 74
More than 200,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste were stored on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean between 1949 and 1982, reports ScienceAlert.
Whatever happened to those barrels? Scientists have descended to the wreckage in a crewed submersible to investigate — and found many of the barrels corroded and degraded, their contents spilling across the seafloor. Surprisingly, this isn't necessarily a subversion of the original plan... The International Atomic Energy Agency recommends that low-level waste be disposed of in robust containment in isolation for at least a few hundred years — but back in the mid-20th century, the recommendations were a little different. The contemporaneous guidelines recommended that containers needed to reach the seafloor intact and remain sealed only long enough for the short-lived radionuclides to decay. After that, the remaining waste was expected to slowly escape and disperse through the surrounding ocean. Not everything in the barrels would conveniently decay away, however. They contained a radioactive hodgepodge, including cesium-137, plutonium isotopes, and tritium, some of which can persist for thousands of years...
[A] few years ago, nuclear engineer Patrick Chardon and marine geologist Javier Escartín of the French National Center for Scientific Research started to wonder what had become of the dumped waste. That question eventually became NODSSUM — Nuclear Ocean Dump Site Survey Monitoring — an interdisciplinary project bringing together nuclear physics, geology, oceanography, biology, and marine chemistry to find the barrels and investigate what, if anything, they were doing to the surrounding environment.... [T]he barrels also appeared to function as tiny oases on the otherwise sparsely populated sandy seafloor. Anemones had attached themselves to the barrels. Sponges, sea cucumbers, fish, and crustaceans lived around them, with crabs apparently particularly fond of the artificial shelters...
Instruments aboard the ship detected significant signals of cobalt-60 and niobium-94, which the researchers could specifically link to the dumped waste... [Samples are now being analyzed] There is precedent, however, to suggest that even striking levels of radioactivity around a source don't necessarily spread very far. A recent study of the sunken Soviet submarine Komsomolets found radionuclide levels hundreds of thousands of times above background immediately around the leaking reactor — but those levels dropped sharply within just a few meters as the material dispersed through the seawater. The NODSSUM team similarly found that, despite the significant radioactive signals around the barrels, activity levels weren't high enough to pose major radiation-protection problems for the scientists handling the samples. [Their three-person submersible] Nautile and the instruments it carried showed no signs of contamination.
The real achievement was mapping the exact location of the barrels. "None of this means the waste is harmless," the article concludes — but it also doesn't mean we're about to be overrun by radioactive crabs."
Whatever happened to those barrels? Scientists have descended to the wreckage in a crewed submersible to investigate — and found many of the barrels corroded and degraded, their contents spilling across the seafloor. Surprisingly, this isn't necessarily a subversion of the original plan... The International Atomic Energy Agency recommends that low-level waste be disposed of in robust containment in isolation for at least a few hundred years — but back in the mid-20th century, the recommendations were a little different. The contemporaneous guidelines recommended that containers needed to reach the seafloor intact and remain sealed only long enough for the short-lived radionuclides to decay. After that, the remaining waste was expected to slowly escape and disperse through the surrounding ocean. Not everything in the barrels would conveniently decay away, however. They contained a radioactive hodgepodge, including cesium-137, plutonium isotopes, and tritium, some of which can persist for thousands of years...
[A] few years ago, nuclear engineer Patrick Chardon and marine geologist Javier Escartín of the French National Center for Scientific Research started to wonder what had become of the dumped waste. That question eventually became NODSSUM — Nuclear Ocean Dump Site Survey Monitoring — an interdisciplinary project bringing together nuclear physics, geology, oceanography, biology, and marine chemistry to find the barrels and investigate what, if anything, they were doing to the surrounding environment.... [T]he barrels also appeared to function as tiny oases on the otherwise sparsely populated sandy seafloor. Anemones had attached themselves to the barrels. Sponges, sea cucumbers, fish, and crustaceans lived around them, with crabs apparently particularly fond of the artificial shelters...
Instruments aboard the ship detected significant signals of cobalt-60 and niobium-94, which the researchers could specifically link to the dumped waste... [Samples are now being analyzed] There is precedent, however, to suggest that even striking levels of radioactivity around a source don't necessarily spread very far. A recent study of the sunken Soviet submarine Komsomolets found radionuclide levels hundreds of thousands of times above background immediately around the leaking reactor — but those levels dropped sharply within just a few meters as the material dispersed through the seawater. The NODSSUM team similarly found that, despite the significant radioactive signals around the barrels, activity levels weren't high enough to pose major radiation-protection problems for the scientists handling the samples. [Their three-person submersible] Nautile and the instruments it carried showed no signs of contamination.
The real achievement was mapping the exact location of the barrels. "None of this means the waste is harmless," the article concludes — but it also doesn't mean we're about to be overrun by radioactive crabs."
Crab people! (Score:5, Funny)
Crab People!
Everybody panic!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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After all, everything eventually evolves into crabs. [wikipedia.org]
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After all, everything eventually evolves into crabs. [wikipedia.org]
And yet "Crab People" is one of the few things to which "Simpsons already did it" does not apply
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Who's waste is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I thought it was US waste being our team who is monitoring it.
Re:Who's waste is it? (Score:5, Informative)
Countries and total activity released:
UK 35087 TBq
Switzerland 4419.3
USA 2942.2
Belgium 2120.3
France 353.4
Netherlands 336
Sweden 3.3
Pacific:
USSR 874
USA 554.4
Japan 15
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/... [iaea.org]
Anyway what do you mean by "our" team? Everyone, every thing and every penny in this study is French.
Re:Who's waste is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
And the winner is...
Acrtic:
USSR 38011
(NB The first list of mine referred to the Atlantic)
Great link, thank you (Score:2)
The nuclear powers have been far more forthcoming that I thought. Watched 'Hunt for Red October' recently ;)
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Terabecquerel(TBq) a Froglish or International System of Units(SI) unit for radioactivity.
1 Terabecquerel(TBq) = 27 Curie(Ci)
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Pacific:
USSR 874
USA 554.4
Japan 15
The natural amount of activity in the Pacific ocean is about 8 billion TBq, mostly potassium-40,
so we are talking less than a drop in a bucket here. Assuming they were dropped deep, and not off somebody's coast?
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I think comparing the total radioactivity of the Pacific with the concentrated radioactivity in a hot spot where waste got domped is not a valid comparison. Concentration matters. If the waste were distributed equally over the entire ocean, it would be irrelevant, but it's not distributed like that.
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Sure, they are 2 different questions:
1) what is the local effect at the dump site? Does it matter?
2) what is the long term effect when the remaining waste disperses?
There is not a lot in between. Anything that dissolves into seawater will rapidly disperse.
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It does seem a bit hard to judge the context. The form is kindof important. For example, in normal operation, pressurized water reactors in the U.S. released 1500 TBq per year in 2003 [wikipedia.org]. That's not "leaked" that is approved release rates of tritium (hydrogen with two extra neutrons) in water. That is normal for nuclear reactors and not dangerous compared to background radiation if dispersed in the planned way, even if it is detectable.
Also, based on Japan's number, it would seem that Fukushima either wa
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It's probably military/DoE waste from the 50s or 60s, or however long ago they were still able to ship large quantities of the stuff without getting NIMBYd.
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Those damned gray whales and their constant legal maneuvering...
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I see your joke but actually moving waste to port via truck or train is a thorny issue. Nobody wants it moved on their roads or across their rails.
Re: Who's waste is it? (Score:2)
As recent as the early 1980's
Re:Who's waste is it? (Score:4, Informative)
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And why isn't that *critical* piece of information contained in the fine summary?
Probably because "Who is waste is it?" doesn't make any sense.
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Why would that be *critical* information?
Would the problem be worse or lessened if it was from the US? Britain? France? Japan? It is more or less a disaster if it's military weapons waste or civilian power waste?
Or are you just upset you don't get to point fingers?
=Smidge=
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Why would that be *critical* information?
It's only important to people who want to see improvements. If you're happy with the status quo, then it's not important.
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It's only important to people who want to see improvements. If you're happy with the status quo, then it's not important.
Nope, it's only important to people who don't want to do anything about it and instead try and blame someone else. See also: Not doing shit about global warming because China something something.
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Nope, it's only important to people who don't want to do anything about it and instead try and blame someone else.
God forbid the person who created the problem pays for cleaning it up.
It seems like about 50% of your time here is spent defending garbage behavior. Weird.
Re: Who's waste is it? (Score:2)
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God forbid the person who created the problem pays for cleaning it up.
It seems like about 50% of your time here is spent defending garbage behavior. Weird.
No 50% of my time is spent here defending reality. In many cases the groups who have dumped this stuff are defunct, the people who did it are dead, and remind me, what was the "garbage behaviour" I was defending?
Are you implying I was defending the dumping of waste, which was a generally excepted practice the world over?
Let me correct you on this. I wasn't defending anything. I was attacking. I was attacking behaviours of people here who ultimately are seeking someone to blame in a way that will never fix t
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There have already been improvements. The practice was banned outright, by everyone, 30 years ago.
=Smidge=
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The people who dumped it there are long dead, or will soon be aging out of life anyways. It's everybody's problem now. Being on the literal bottom of the ocean and "missing" for many decades it's probably not doing much harm down there. If the ocean evaporates enough that a human can get within 2 miles of the stuff, we'll have bigger problems to worry about anyways.
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That's pretty ignorant, really. I mean, I get what TFS is saying about the reduction in detected radiation mere meters away from it, but "it's not harming humanity therefore it's not harmful" is how we end up with miles-wide islands of floating plastic garbage in the Pacific.
"It's not my problem, so it's not a problem" is exactly the short-sighted idiocy that makes smaller problems into great whacking huge problems without anyone realizing it.
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So your argument is, "broken window theory applies to highly regulated nuclear waste"
At least some of the links are paywalled (Score:5, Funny)
Including the Le Monde story about crabs using the containers as artificial shelters.
Fortunately I found there's at least one picture of this on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
The barrels were meant to leak (Score:3)
The unsettling part is that a corroded barrel is not necessarily a failed design. The disposal plan assumed eventual leakage after short-lived radionuclides decayed, with the ocean providing dilution. The question now is how much activity remains and where it goes.
A radiation signal beside a barrel does not, by itself, establish harm to wildlife. Equally, a clean submersible says little about years of exposure for animals living there. The crabs matter because the barrels provide scarce shelter, drawing organisms into contact with the surrounding sediment.
The answer needs isotope-by-isotope measurements in sediment, water, and animal tissue, compared across distances and with reference sites. The researchers say [ens.psl.eu] they have mapped less than 2% of the dumping area. We know material has escaped; we do not yet know its ecological reach.
Re:The barrels were meant to leak (Score:5, Insightful)
They were still dumping this in the 70's and 80's when they knew better.
Over the years this is an accumulation of approximately 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools (I'm hand waiving here assuming the density of the waste is the same as water). So yes, the ocean can dilute that, but it does impact the local ecology. And it does violate the principle of "don't shit where you eat", in that some of the sites are beneath prime fishing areas for the US and EU.
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I'm pretty sure that's a false assumption. Most radioactive elements with a half-life longer than 20 years are a lot heavier than a water molecule. H20 weighs about 20 protons+neutrons and is a lot larger than any atom, so the other stuff will be a lot denser.
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My assumption is based on that most radioactive waste by volume is the water that was used to wash or clean contaminated parts.
If we had elemental uranium packed into a barrel it would be incredibly heavy of course. But also far too valuable to throw away. Generally the stuff we throw out is contaminated with radio isotopes that are difficult to separate and it's often mixed with a significant amount of non-radioactive compounds. It's waste in the most traditional sense of the word.
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That doesn't change the argument. The water that dilutes the waste isn't, itself, radioactive. If it's soluble, the dissolved mix is going to be heavier. What can change it is if there are strong currents near the location, and here "strong" doesn't mean very strong, but just enough to keep the heavier parts from settling lower through turbulence. Another thing that can change it is if it is adsorbed by passing organic molecules (e.g. the skin of fish or shell of crabs...but fish are more mobile).
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So yes, the ocean can dilute that, but it does impact the local ecology.
It bio-accumulates. Radio-isotopes mimic micro-nutrients and are used by the body of plants and animals until they are eaten by something else.
And it does violate the principle of "don't shit where you eat", in that some of the sites are beneath prime fishing areas for the US and EU.
Which is how people accumulate radio-isotopes in the body because it is humans on the top of the food chain. After that it takes about 6 years of internal radiation exposure for body tissues to gestate a tumor. Plutonium Chloride is really good at creating leukemia because it looks like iron to the body and readily absorbed by people.
When the animal (or human) di
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It bio-accumulates. Radio-isotopes mimic micro-nutrients and are used by the body of plants and animals until they are eaten by something else.
Not a lot of plants at 4000 meters.
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It bio-accumulates. Radio-isotopes mimic micro-nutrients and are used by the body of plants and animals until they are eaten by something else.
Not a lot of plants at 4000 meters.
You mean plankton and zooplankton [youtube.com] isn't there bro.
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The unsettling part is that a corroded barrel is not necessarily a failed design.
Unsettling because it's not the radioactivity levels in the vicinity of the barrels that is of concern*. It's the solubility of various radionuclides in sea water and the subsequent diffusion over large distances that concerns me. Glassification of spent fuel and other byproducts would tend to confine this stuff, keeping them in one place.
*See https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ [xkcd.com]
Did they see Sponge Bob? (Score:3)
I hope they got to visit with Sponge Bob and see his lovely Pineapple under the sea home!
Godzilla feasts on the dumb ideas of mankind (Score:3)
One day he will roam the coastal cities on a big thank-you-dumb-humans tour.
type44q (Score:2)
More than 200,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste were stored ...
Let me know when the LLM's can tell the difference between "stored" and "discarded "
Killing millions is ok then... (Score:3)
You think it's ok to judge radioactive waste by the contemporaneous standards?
No.
Regulations Improved Over Time (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a typical example of how a technology starts with pretty loose regulation, and then becomes more regulated over time as the law has time to catch up.
It makes you wonder what currently fresh technology will be looked back on in the future in the same way.
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It makes you wonder what currently fresh technology will be looked back on in the future in the same way.
Funny how LLMs sprang immediately to my mind. Then I wondered if there will actually BE a future for us from which we can look back on them.
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What a strange comment to make given the story literally two stories above this one.
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It makes you wonder what currently fresh technology will be looked back on in the future in the same way.
OpenAI's autonomous agent literally just hacked a government and there's nothing that can be done about it because the laws don't cover AI agents. It's a perfect example.
They did this in the Pacific as well (Score:5, Informative)
It is a little odd for the headline to call this "storage" when it was clearly dumping with no intent to ever recover the waste.
They did the same thing in the Pacific of the Farralon islands just outside of San Francisco bay and the Golden Gate. 47,600 barrels were dumped off of ships in about 540 square miles between 1946 and 1970. In addition, the USS Independence (CVL-22), a WWII carrier that was severely contaminated by the Bikini hydrogen bomb test was scuttled there in 1951. I recall at the time when the barrel dumping came out that some calculations had revealed that the barrels would be falling through the water fast enough to rupture when they hit the ocean floor.
It is kind of sickening how cavalier people were with all kinds of industrial waste before the late 60s early 70s. There really was no concern for any damage to nature or long term effects. The effects of this carelessness and willing pollution will be with us for many decades.
I don't fear the crabs (Score:2)
I don't fear radioactive crabs, I fear sharks with mechanical legs [wikipedia.org] (like this [squarespace-cdn.com])
"Stored"? (Score:4, Informative)
Saying it was "stored" implies they planned to keep it safe and get it back at some point.
"Dumped" would be the honest word, but since when have we expected honesty from a government?
We should expect better from the media, though...
Re: "Stored"? (Score:2)
I told my Mom that I store my laundry on the floor. And at least I intended to use it, unlike the radioactive dump sites around the world.
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I told my Mom that I store my laundry on the floor.
Mom it's a floordrobe!
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As fission chips.
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Ugh (Score:3)
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It's not an unreasonable conclusion, as we have progressively gotten better at handling toxic things.
Money will continue to dominate decisions (Score:2)
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It's not really worth worrying about. Due to absorption, scattering and inverse square law, this stuff affects practically no one and very few organisms, except for those that directly cling to the containers, even with the lax standards from that time. People just don't understand nuclear decay products and how they interact with water, let alone air. This is of scientific interest perhaps, but not at all worrisome from an environmental perspective.
Radioactive crabs? (Score:2)
You're saying this isn't how you get the ultimate kaiju?
"overrun by radioactive crabs" (Score:2)
...is my new favorite phrase.
Uncle Al, famous Usenet chemist says.... (Score:3)
My sushi dinner tasted like pork (Score:2)
this explains it
under or in? (Score:2)
If they weren't buried, then they were in, not under, the term "underwater" notwithstanding.