seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 13, 2016 8:21 am wrote:Research: Fukushima radiation reaches U.S. shores for first time
By Allen Cone | Dec. 12, 2016 at 6:21 AM
Members of Japan's Ground Self Defense Force decontaminate at the city office of Tomioka Machi, 5 1/2 miles from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture, Japan, on December 8, 2011. The earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011. For the first time, radiation reached North America earlier this year. File photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo
WOOD HOLE, Mass., Dec. 12 (UPI) -- For the first time since the nuclear disaster in 2011, radiation from Japan's Fukushima plant has reached the West Coast of the United States, according to a New England researcher.
It's a minuscule amount -- less than one-thousandth the standard for drinking water or a dental X-ray. But it's notable considering the amount was detected 5,000 miles from Japan five years after the disaster.
From his lab another 3,000 miles east in Massachusetts, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution chemical oceanographer Ken Buesseler discovered samples of seawater taken in January and February from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in central Oregon contain radiation unique to the power plants. It wasn't until last week that it was reported by a media outlet, the Statesman Journal, which serves the Oregon area where the samples were found.
"Not to downplay it, but the levels we are seeing are quite low," Buesseler told UPI.
He said it wouldn't stop him from eating seafood or swimming in the Pacific Ocean.
Massive amounts of contaminated water were released from the March 2011 meltdown of three power plants after the 9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Radiation was released to the air that fell into the sea.
U.S. federal agencies don't monitor the radiation levels in seawater.
So, Buesseler launched a crowd-funded, citizen-science seawater sampling project.
He tracks radiation across the Pacific Ocean sent to him by West Coast volunteers and scientists aboard research cruises. Then he analyzes samples.
Personally, Buessler has made seven trips to Japan to study radiation levels.
The Oregon samples were the first time cesium-134 -- which is a "fingerprint" to the Japanese plant -- was detected on U.S. shores.
Buesseler's most recent samples off the West Coast also show higher levels of cesium-137, another Fukushima isotope than previously was present in the world's oceans because of nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s.
"You can't ever have a radioactive-free ocean," he said. "You have nuclear disasters like this one, testing and naturally occurring radioactivity."
Cesium-134 was also been detected for the first in a Canadian salmon as part of the Fukushima InFORM project, led by University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen. Buesseler's group recently teamed up with InFORM.
Buesseler's team in February 2015 found Cesium-134 in a sample of seawater from a dock on Vancouver Island, B.C., marking the first landfall in North America from the disaster,
"Even if the levels were twice as high, you could still swim in the ocean for six hours every day for a year and receive a dose more than a thousand times less than a single dental X-ray," Buesseler told the Statesman Journal at the time. "While that's not zero, that's a very low risk."
Buesseler is not really interested in the levels, but in seeing how they vary in terms of distance and time from where the radiation was dispersed.
"As a scientist, I want to see how quickly ocean current mixes," he said. "Models are not my specialty."
The ocean patterns could help determine where the radiation is headed if there is another disaster.
Earlier this year, Japan and Russia announced they would team up to study the effects of radiation on the DNA of future generations.
The Japanese government is still dealing with the environmental and economic consequences of the disaster. Koyodo News reported last month the cost of terminating the nuclear power station nearly doubled from the country's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to about $178.14 billion. Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc.'s compensation payments are to increase from $48.1 billion to $71.3 billion. Decontamination costs will double to $44.5 billion, according to the report.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2016/12/ ... 481288714/
This is a strange story. If one does a quick internet search now, one gets this story of Fukushima radiation arriving on the US west coast in minor amount and negligible effect. My mind went all Mandela Effect. I thought that radiation had arrived several years ago from ocean currents and that radiation in clouds had reached the USA west coast in a matter of weeks.
However look at this article from several years ago which states that radiation reached the west coast from ocean currents in 2013:
New study reveals Fukushima radiation reached U.S. coast far sooner than previously believed, as cesium levels reach record high off Western shores
Written By: Greg White January 11, 2016
Last December, scientists detected the highest levels of radiation from the Fukushima disaster taken to date, off the coast of California. Now, researchers have released the results of a new study on just how long it took those radioactive particles to plague American shores.
According to the report of Canadian researchers in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, it took approximately 2.1 years for cesium-134 and cesium-137 from the Fukushima disaster to navigate across the Pacific Ocean and bombard the West Coast. During that time, a spike in beached marine life began to infest California’s shores. Meanwhile, the mainstream media’s coverage of the disaster fell virtually silent, claiming radiation levels did not pose a threat to public health.(1)
Cesium-134 has a half-life of about two years, whereas cesium 137- has a half-life of a little over 30 years. These radioactive elements did exist in the environment prior to the advent of nuclear weapons and, eventually, the nuclear tests and accidents that followed.(2)
“We had a situation where the radioactive tracer was deposited at a very specific location off the coast of Japan at a very specific time,” said John Smith of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia, who authored the study.(1)
“It was kind of like a dye experiment,” he added. “And it is unambiguous — you either see the signal or you don’t, and when you see it you know exactly what you are measuring,” he added.(1)
Fukushima radiation reaches British Columbia less than two years after disaster
Smith and his team first started collecting samples of ocean water as far as 930 miles off the coastline of British Columbia in June 2011, three months after the Fukushima catastrophe. They then collected samples from the same sites every June until 2013.(1)
The samples taken in 2011 showed no traces of cesium from the Fukushima disaster. By 2012, however, traces of radiation were detected in the westernmost sampling site. By June 2013, the radiation had reached Canada’s continental shelf, note the researchers.(1)
A Becquerel (Bq) is the number of radioactive decay events per second for every 260 gallons of water. The amount of radiation detected by the researchers was relatively small, below 1 Bq per cubic meter. That level is at least 1,000 times lower than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows in public drinking water.(1)
The research reveals that radiation from the Fukushima disaster was able to spread out across the ocean far quicker than previous estimates suggest. Many figures indicated it would take at least four years for radiation to reach the West Coast, and it’s by no means dying down.
The highest record of radiation taken to date was discovered 1,600 miles west of San Francisco late last year. The amount of radioactive cesium detected in the samples was 11 Bq per cubic meter of seawater (264 gallons), which is 50 percent higher than other samples taken across the coast.(2)
No safe levels of cesium-134 or cesium-137
Although this is the highest sample taken to date, it is still 500 times lower than U.S. government safety limits for drinking water, which says more about government safety standards than it does about the purity of the water. In fact, ironically, following the Fukushima disaster, the federal government actually increased the amount of radiation permitted in citizens’ drinking water.(2)
Remember, there are no “safe” levels of radiation. Even small amounts of radiation can have an accumulative affect overtime, which can cause an onslaught of health problems in the long-term.
“[Cesium] levels in the eastern North Pacific from Fukushima inputs will probably return eastern North Pacific concentrations to the fallout levels that prevailed during the 1980s but does not represent a threat to human health or the environment,” the authors of the recent study wrote.(1)
Computer models and samples collected thus far predict that radiation levels off the coast of British Columbia will peak in 2016 and remain below 5 Bq per cubic meter.
Sources include:
(1) TechTimes.com
(2) FukushimaWatch.com
http://fukushimawatch.com/2016-01-11-ne ... hores.html