...tritium can be expected to rapidly diffuse and be carried by currents. Even if we were to look at simple Fick's law diffusion, we would expect it to rapidly disperse owing to the low molecular weight of HTO, 20 g/mol.
But there is a current.
This was covered by the authors of the paper correcting international paroxysms of media stupidity about the famous "Fukushima Tuna Fish" in PNAS: Evaluation of radiation doses and associated risk from the Fukushima nuclear accident to marine biota and human consumers of seafood Nicholas S. Fisher, Karine Beaugelin-Seiller, Thomas G. Hinton, Zofia Baumann, Daniel J. Madigan, and Jacqueline Garnier-Laplace, PNAS June 3, 2013 110 (26) 10670-10675.
They referred to their original paper on tracking the migration of tuna using the (relatively) short lived radioisotope 134Cs released by the Fukushima event.
I quoted some of the text from this paper expressing the scientist's exasperation with our "...but her emails..." media here:
For my 30,000th post, I'd like to thank DU for inspiring me to expand my knowledge, and of course...
There is no way that the tritium that so terrifies radiation paranoids and their fossil fuel enablers and supporters stays localized, absolutely no way. Even if it did - and again and again and again and again it doesn't - the risk would be trivial and not worth the death toll caused by the use of electrical power generated by dangerous fossil fuels to power computers for morons in the media and elsewhere to carry on about it.
Actually the IEA and Japanese authorities have been examining the detection of tritium outside Fukushima, and the signal, if any, is below to the LOD, limit of detection.
IAEA sees no rise in tritium level near Fukushima Daiichi
Thus I stand by my contention, to repeat, that more people have been killed by the air pollution generated by fossil fuels burned to carry on insipidly about this non issue.
On the second point, the full article makes it clear that the risk associated with different nuclei is different, and it is, in fact, addressed in the graphic. The highest dose coefficients are related to the two naturally occurring radionuclides found in the ocean, radium-226 and polonium-210, both members of the uranium decay series, present in seawater as a function the vast natural uranium resources found in the ocean, some 4.5 billion tons. Note that the units in the upper graphic are log scale, tritium is roughly 500,000 lower in risk per Beq than is polonium-210. It also has a vastly shorter biological half-life.
= new reply since forum marked as read