The role of zeolites in the nuclear leak crisis(1)

After discussions, on April 13, 2021, the Japanese government held a cabinet meeting and formally decided to discharge the nuclear wastewater stored at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea after filtering and diluting it again, ignoring questions and objections from domestic and international public opinion. 

The discharge will begin in about two years. The entire discharge is expected to last for 20 to 30 years, ending in 2041 to 2051 when the Fukushima nuclear power plant completes its reactor decommissioning. The world is in an uproar, including the Japan Fisheries Association, the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the South Korean Foreign Ministry, and the Oita Prefectural University of Nursing Science are all opposed to this move. Some expert analysis pointed out that once the nuclear wastewater is discharged, Japan's Pacific coastal waters will be affected, especially the local waters around Fukushima Prefecture, after which the sewage will also pollute China's East China Sea area.

Normally operating nuclear power plants need to use perfect protection facilities to limit the leakage of radioactive substances, and the Fukushima nuclear power plant is dealing with liquid waste - radioactive wastewater this time. This wastewater consists of large amounts of neutrons and gamma rays released during the reaction of nuclear fuel, which can directly break through the body's DNA chain and cause human cells to stop further replication. 

It is well known that normal human cells produce a large number of replications every day as a way to sustain life, and damage to DNA that causes no further replication can cause irreversible damage to the human body and has a huge negative and harmful effect on the natural environment.

In the 1980s, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union also had a serious nuclear leak that killed 60,000-80,000 people and caused 130,000 people to suffer from various levels of radiation sickness over a 15-year period. After repeated studies, scientists paved the radiation area with zeolites and used them extensively for environmental remediation after the accident. Later, researcher Osmanlioglu and others examined and proved that zeolite can have good effect on the removal of 137Cs, 60Co, 90Sr and 110mAg, the main nuclides in the radioactive waste liquid of Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The dumping of nuclear wastewater in Japan has brought the public's focus back to the issue of nuclear power plant leaks. As one of the most serious nuclear accidents in the world to date, the Fukushima accident has had a profound impact on the marine environment, food safety and human health. As mentioned earlier, it was the excellent adsorption properties of zeolite that saved the day when the Japanese nuclear leak was managed, stopping the spread of radioactive materials in the water and soil.

In fact, Japanese experts claim that this dumping of nuclear wastewater in the sea was not a direct discharge of untreated fuel rod cooling wastewater. It was treated with tritium, strontium, cesium, cobalt and other radionuclides by using the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), a multi-nucleotide removal device, and the main principle of the device is "adsorption". After co-precipitation of iron salts and carbonates, the nuclear wastewater is further adsorbed using various filter materials to bring the nuclide content in the wastewater below the limit. 

It is likely that the device contains zeolite, an excellent adsorption material, in the context of the technical aspects of the treatment of waste water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011 (zeolite adsorption and precipitation treatment technology).