If you’ve been following the news, you’ll have noticed that Japan started discharging its tritiated water into the ocean last week, over the objections of China and South Korea and with the concurrence of the International Atomic Energy Agency. I noticed there were a few comments on my recent ACSH piece on this matter and thought I’d address a few of the points raised in the comments.
Tritium
It probably won’t shock you that there’s a general perception that radiation is unusually dangerous. Even the slightest exposure can cause cancer, congenital disabilities, constipation, skin burns, bad breath, and death (well…most of these, anyhow)… so the public is scared of radiation. So it’s hardly surprising that the discovery of tritium (a radioactive form of hydrogen) in groundwater near the Brookhaven National Laboratory kindled months of media coverage