[ RadSafe ] Japanese Scientist Claims to Have Developed Powder thatCan Clean Fukushima Daiichi Radioactive Water Faster Than Areva - JapanReal Time - WSJ

[franz.schoenhofer at chello.at]

Roger,

There are many methods known to remove radionuclides from water, these being in many cases (or almost all) well established and well investigated and very successful. I even have worked in the framework of a European Union project on removal of NORM from drinking water - there is not much difference to artificial radionuclides and being a radiochemist, having been heavily involved (unfortunately!) in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident I dare to have an opinion on such beeathtaking news. Furthermore I am a radiochemist......

Looking at the link I cannot see any description of the method - obviously deliberately obscured, not at all because of patent reasons. If somebody wants to have his "research" acknowledged, he has to give information about it and not to hide it. From the colour of the precipitates it seems to be a kind of clay. Zeolithes are very well known to adsorb Caesium. In the debris from a nuclear accident, there are a large number of radionuclides present, not only Cs-137! So what? The claim of tons of water to be purified within an hour has to be questioned seriously - what throughput would this require?

Hexacyanoferrates have been proved to be the most effective scavengers of Cesium,  the pictures definitely do not show precipitation of those. 

Be careful with such universal remedies - they usually do not work!

Best regards,

Franz







---- Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com> schrieb:
> This looks interesting, it is a bit old article but I stumbled upon it
> today.  Does anyone know if this new process of precipitating out
> Cesium compounds from water actually works and was used at Fukushima?
> Thanks.
> 
> Roger Helbig
> 
> http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/04/21/chemist-i-can-clean-fukushima-
> water-faster/
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--
Franz Schoenhofer, PhD, MinRat
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
Austria
mobile: ++43 699 1706 1227