"Damage to tritium exit signs is most likely to occur when a sign is dropped during installation or smashed into the demolition of a building. If a tritium exit sign is damaged, the tritium could be released".If a tritium exit sign is broken, never tamper with it. Leave the area immediately and call for help."
Adds EPA: "Unwanted tritium exit signs may not be put into ordinary trash; they require special disposal. Tritium exit signs that are illegally put in ordinary landfills can break and contaminate the site."
Further, says the Conference of Radiation Control Programs, Inc. on its posting headed "Tritium Exit Signs Present a Challenge in Handling and Disposal," they "must be isolated from other wastes during disposal, since they may and often do contaminate scrap metal from demolition sites. For this reason, tritium exit signs are regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and proper disposal of the signs is required once they are no longer used. "
It goes on: "While many large commercial and government entities are aware of the requirements for use and disposal, many small businesses are unaware of the NRC requirements, leading to the improper disposal of tritium exit signs industrial or municipal landfills, or worse, their being sold over the internet. An estimated 2 million tritium exit signs have been sold in the U.S. The number of signs in use now and where they are located is unknown, given that there is limited tracking of the purchase, use, or disposal of the signs and that tritium exit signs have a usable life ranging from ten to twenty years."
Also, says the organization: "Should a tritium exit sign which contains tritium-filled glassed tubes break, its contents could pose a risk to those located in the near vicinity. They could be exposed to tritium gas or tritiated water from the tritium that has escaped into the environment. Cleaning up tritium after an accident could be costly, especially for small businesses. Worker or public exposure to tritium also could present unwanted and unnecessary liabilities."
So it goes regarding the very real dangers of tritium exit signs.
For a broader review of the hazards of tritium, this year a book, Tritium's Danger, was published, authored by Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. His Ph.D. involved a specialization in nuclear fusion, on which the hydrogen bomb is based. The hydrogen bomb's fusion process utilizes tritium. And, if fusion is ever developed as an energy source and an enormous effort has been underway for years to do that tritium would play a major part.
"Makhijani makes it clear that the impacts of tritium on human health, especially when it is taken inside the body, warrant much more attention and control than they have received until now," writes Robert Alvarez in his review of Tritium's Danger in the June 26, 2023 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, served as senior policy adviser to the Department of Energy's secretary and was deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999.
Tritium, relates Alvarez, "is one of the most expensive, rare, and potentially harmful elements in the world."
"Although its rarity and usefulness in some applications give it a high monetary value, tritium is also a radioactive contaminant that has been released widely to the air and water from nuclear power and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plants," Alvarez goes on. "Makhijani points out that 'one teaspoon of tritiated water would contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water to the U.S. drinking water limit; that is enough to supply about 1 million homes with water for a year."
"Since the 1990s, about 70 percent of the nuclear power plant sites in the United States (43 out of 61 sites) have had significant tritium leaks that contaminated groundwater in excess of federal drinking water limits," writes Alvarez.
"The most recent leak occurred in November 2022, involving 400,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated water from the Monticello nuclear station in Minnesota. The leak was kept from the public for several months".A good place to start limiting the negative effects of tritium contamination, Makhijani recommends, is to significantly tighten drinking water standards," says Alvarez.
"Routine releases of airborne tritium are also not trivial," writes Alvarez. As part of his "well-researched" book, says Alvarez, "Makhijani underscores this point by including a detailed atmospheric dispersion study that he commissioned, indicating that tritium from the Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant in Illinois has literally raining down from gaseous releases as it incorporates with precipitation to form tritium oxide something that occurs at water cooled reactors. Spent fuel storage pools are considered the largest source of gaseous tritium releases."
And Alvarez, who not only has long experience as an official with the Department of Energy but for years was senior investigator for the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, states: "In past decades, regulators have papered over the tritium-contamination problem by asserting, when tritium leakage becomes a matter of public concern, that the tritium doses humans might receive are too small to be of concern. Despite growing evidence that tritium is harmful in ways that fall outside the basic framework for radiation protection, agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission remain frozen in time when it comes to tritium regulation. The NRC and other regulating agencies are sticking to an outdated premise that tritium is a 'mild' radioactive contaminant".Overall, the NRC implies its risk of tritium ingestion causing cancer is small."
As for the dumping of 1.3 million tons of tritium-contaminated water into the Pacific from the Fukushima site, this is being opposed in the Pacific region and is focused upon in a just-released film documentary, "The Fukushima Disaster: The Hidden Side of the Story."
After the 2011 disaster, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the owner of the Fukushima plants, released 300,000 tons of tritium-contaminated water into the Pacific, notes the film. A thousand tanks were eventually built for holding tritium-contaminated water which continues to leak from the plants. But now there is no room for additional tanks. So the 1.3 million tons of tritium-contaminated water are proposed to be discharged over 30 years into the Pacific.
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