For years, the folks who live along the western coast of Norway have been complaining about the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant on the northwest coast of England.
Since it's startup, the plant has been releasing Technetium-99, an isotope with a 213,000 year half-life, into the sea via the water used in it's reprocessing activities, at the steadily-increasing rate currently over 250 TBq/yr. Plenty of other isotopes are to be found in toxic concentrations in the sea surrounding the plant, but they are heavier isotopes, including Plutonium and Americum-241, and tended to sink quickly. Technetium,
otoh, drifts... all the way across the sea to Norway.
Today, Earth Day 2004, it was
announced that the glow from north atlantic shellfish may soon be less glaring.
The past 12 years have seen a significant increase in the amount of Technetium-99 found in seagrass, clams, shrimp and lobster along the western coast of Norway. In some cases, the radioactive concentrations were increased dramatically within very short time spans. The Norwegians complained to England, loudly. The problem for the Brits was that getting all of the radioactive waste filtered out of the waste water has always been cost-prohibitive.
Finally, after a various arguments, bad feelings, and diplomatic snits during the past 10 years between Norway and her messy neighbor to the west, the EU last month ordered the reduction of emissions at the plant, since the levels in shellfish being harvested between northern GB and Norway had begun to approach the limits set by the EU. Well, lo and behold, a solution has been found which might just work.
It seems that a
"new technique" for treatment of the waste involving the chemical tetraphenylphosphonium bromide allows most of the technetium-99 to be stored as solid waste rather than discharged as a liquid into the sea. The reduction from todays levels is expected to be at least
ninety percent.
While the Irish government still wants all waste output from the plant stopped, and naturally, the British company spokesman maintains that "there is no evidence that the discharge of Tc-99 into the sea at its current discharge limit is harmful to man or the environment", the Norwegians are
very happy, with the Prime Minister saying, "It pays to protest". (Emphasis mine)