Announcing the method of cleaning up radiation in Fukushima

A group of scientists has just announced a promising new method that can clear radioactive remnants in Fukushima after the 2011 nuclear disaster.

Hundreds of millions of liters of radioactive wastewater still remain in areas around Fukushima, where the 2011 Japanese nuclear disaster occurred.

But scientists do not think that this water simply flows into the ocean, if it is still there, it will seep into the ground.

A group of scientists working at Rice University in Texas State and Kazan University in Russia have come up with a promising idea of ​​removing radioactive strontium and cesium from the water, using a cheap material. called oxidized carbon (OMC) . Scientists believe that the OMC filtration system can clean water safely enough to enter the ocean and prevent any other contamination.

OMC filter is produced from C-seal-F commercial carbon source.(Photo: Kazan Federal University).

You may have heard about carbon or coal filters, but these filters do not work well for heavy metals in radioactive water.

Earlier, the team of scientists reported on a material called graphene oxide , which could filter common radioactive elements like strontium but did not filter it. Moreover, the cost of graphene oxide materials is quite expensive.

This led the research team to OMC, which is 10 times cheaper than graphene oxide and can be produced from a commercial carbon source called C-seal-F , or "shungite" - a type rocks in nature in northwestern Russia.

Scientists have created filters with OMC from both sources, by treating them with acids, creating a surface-rich oxygen-rich material that follows heavy metal contaminants. The water after flowing through OMC is screened for the elements strontium, cesium and other heavy metals.

The results showed that 800 milligrams of OMC from C-seal-F filtered 83% cesi and 68% strontium from 100ml water, while OMC shungite filter filtered up to 70% cesium and 47% strontium.

Results are published in Carbon magazine. However, this study is only evidence for a model, and testing is done on water containing strontium and cesi but not radioactive.

It takes a while for radioactive isotopes to change, and we wait to see if this filter actually works.