Simulation of tritium releases into the atmosphere during the Fukushima accident and into the ocean due to planned discharge of treated water

Following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) in March 2011, large quantities of radioactive materials were released into the atmosphere and ocean. Since the FDNPP nuclear accident, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) operators have been implementing measures to reduce groundwater inflow into the FDNPP damaged reactor buildings while pumping water to cool the nuclear reactors and fuel debris. The resulting huge water volume began the discharge into the ocean from August 2023, after being treated by an Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) to remove radionuclides for acceptable discharge levels except tritium. Tritium releases from the FDNPP accident and the ALPS treated water raise questions about the impact on tritium in precipitation in Japan, the removal time of anthropogenic tritium in groundwater and the oceanic transport of tritium from released ALPS treated water. 

In this two-part study, we present (1) the modeling of tritium in precipitation during the FDNPP accident using an atmosphere general circulation model (AGCM), and (2) a sensitivity simulation of tritium concentration in the ocean due to planned ALPS treated water release in the next decades by TEPCO using an ocean general circulation model (OGCM). 

For the atmospheric part, we used the isotope-enabled AGCM MIROC5-iso, in which tritium has been implemented [1], and adapted an estimated atmospheric release of iodine-131 [2] for the anthropogenic tritium source. We found good agreement with the tritium in precipitation observations in Japan for 2011 and subsequent years, despite MIROC5-iso’s rather coarse horizontal resolution (approximately 2.8°). Together with measured tritium data in Japan, our modeled results can be used to interpret mean transit times of Fukushima surface and groundwater systems and in other Asian systems (see abstract of Gusyev et al. in the same session).

For the oceanic part, we used the OGCM COCO4.9, which is the ocean component of the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate, version 6 (MIROC6 [3]), and the tritium discharge scenario from TEPCO. Tritium concentration at the ocean surface reaches approximately 3 Bq/m³ near the release site and varies between 0.01 and 0.25 Bq/m³ in the North Pacific Ocean, well below the natural tritium level (approximately 50 Bq/m³ [4]). For this kind of projection simulation, the use of a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean model would make it possible to model tritium concentration in both the atmosphere and the ocean, as well as the dynamics of exchanges within and between these water cycle reservoirs.

 

[1] Cauquoin et al.: Modeling natural tritium in precipitation and its dependence on decadal variations of solar activity using the atmospheric general circulation model MIROC5-iso, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., in review (minor revisions).

[2] Katata et al., Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 1029–1070, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-1029-2015, 2015.

[3] Tatebe et al., Geosci. Model Dev., 12, 2727–2765, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-2727-2019, 2019.

[4] Jenkins et al., Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 11, 441–454, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-441-2019, 2019.