Fukushima radiation has reached U.S. shores

Fukushima radiation has reached U.S. shores

Scientists have detected radiation from Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster on the U.S. West Coast. 

 

by Tracy Loew

For the first time, seaborne radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected on the West Coast of the United States.

Cesium-134, the so-called fingerprint of Fukushima, was measured in seawater samples taken from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are reporting.

Because of its short half-life, cesium-134 can only have come from Fukushima.

Also for the first time, cesium-134 has been detected in a Canadian salmon, the Fukushima InFORM project, led by University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen, is reporting.

In both cases, levels are extremely low, the researchers said[...]

Massive amounts of contaminated water were released from the crippled nuclear plant following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. More radiation was released to the air, then fell to the sea.

Woods Hole chemical oceanographer Ken Buesseler runs a crowd-funded, citizen science seawater sampling project that has tracked the radiation plume as it slowly makes its way across the Pacific Ocean.

The Oregon samples, marking the first time cesium-134 has been detected on U.S. shores, were taken in January and February of 2016 and later analyzed. They each measured 0.3 becquerels per cubic meter of cesium-134.

Buesseler’s team previously had found the isotope in a sample of seawater taken from a dock on Vancouver Island, B.C., marking its landfall in North America.

(Photo: Christopher Furlong / Getty Images)

Meanwhile, in Canada, Cullen leads the InFORM project to assess radiological risks to that country’s oceans following the nuclear disaster. It is a partnership of a dozen academic, government and non-profit organizations, including Woods Hole.

Last month, the group reported that a single sockeye salmon, sampled from Okanagan Lake in the summer of 2015, had tested positive for cesium-134.

The level was more than 1,000 times lower than the action level set by Health Canada, and is no significant risk to consumers, Cullen said.

Buesseler’s most recent samples off the West Coast also are showing higher-than background levels of cesium-137, another Fukushima isotope that already is present in the world's oceans because of nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s.

Those results will become more important in tracking the radiation plume, Buesseler said, because the short half-life of cesium-134 makes it harder to detect as time goes on.

Cesium-134 has a half-life of two years, meaning it’s down to a fraction of what it was five years ago, he said. Cesium-137 has a 30-year half-life.

A recent InFORM analysis of Buesseler’s data concluded that concentrations of cesium-137 have increased considerably in the central northeast Pacific[...]

“It appears that the plume has spread throughout this vast area from Alaska to California,” the scientists wrote.

They estimated that the plume is moving toward the coast at roughly twice the speed of a garden snail. Radiation levels have not yet peaked.

“As the contamination plume progresses towards our coast we expect levels closer to shore to increase over the coming year,” Cullen said[...] But the models will help scientists model ocean currents in the future.

That could prove important if there is another disaster or accident at the Fukushima plant, which houses more than a thousand huge steel tanks of contaminated water and where hundreds of tons of molten fuel remain inside the reactors.

In a worst-case scenario, the fuel would melt through steel-reinforced concrete containment vessels into the ground, uncontrollably spreading radiation into the surrounding soil and groundwater and eventually into the sea.

“That’s the type of thing where people are still concerned, as am I, about what could happen,” Buesseler said.

Scientists now know it would take four to five years for any further contamination from the plant to reach the West Coast.

Tracking the plume

 

Scientists are beginning to use an increase in cesium-137 instead of the presence of cesium-134 to track the plume of radioactive contamination from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster. These figures show the increase in cesium-137 near the West Coast between 2014 and 2015.

137 Cesium Activity in 2014. (Photo: Dr. Jonathan Kellogg / InFORM)

137 Cesium Activity in 2015. (Photo: Dr. Jonathan Kellogg / InFORM)

Graphic courtesy Dr. Jonathan Kellogg of InFORM, with data from Dr. John Smith, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Dr. Ken Buesseler, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.


Learn more about Ken Beusseler’s crowd-funded, citizen-science seawater sampling project at http://www.ourradioactiveocean.org/.

See test results at http://www.ourradioactiveocean.org/results.html.

From Statesman Journal @ http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/tech/science/environment/2016/12/07/fukushima-radiation-has-reached-us-shores/95045692/

New Illuminati comments: The situation has been far worse than reported by most mainstream media for a long while now. Please listen to Jim Rense and guests describe the true depth of the horror facing our planet:

Fukushima & Pacific Ocean Health ☢ Update

Almost six years after Fukushima, crisis continues

 

by Tracy Loew

Radiation in the Pacific Ocean near Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is at levels as high, or higher, than has been measured in the past three years, as the crippled plant continues to bleed contamination into the sea, new results from a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution research cruise show.

“We think it’s related to the ongoing leaks,” said Ken Buesseler, a Woods Hole chemical oceanographer who is among a handful of scientists studying the contamination and its path across the ocean to North America. “It’s a little surprising and contrary to claims they’ve stopped all flow. So we’re not out of the woods yet.”

[It’s been almost six] years since a 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake shook the Tohoku area, 170 miles north of Tokyo. Fifty minutes after the shaking stopped, a wall of water arrived, reaching heights of 130 feet and moving inland as much as six miles in some places. About 20,000 people died, mostly from drowning.

The tsunami swamped Fukushima Daiichi’s seawall, knocking out power to four of its six nuclear reactors. Without power to pump cooling water, three of those reactors melted down, spewing radiation into the air and sea. It was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, in 1986.

An earthquake-triggered tsunami sweeps shores along Iwanuma in northern Japan on Friday March 11, 2011. (Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Unlike Chernobyl, however, this crisis played out slowly, and continues today, on both sides of the Pacific.

At the plant, hundreds of tons of molten fuel remain inside the reactors.

TEPCO, the Japanese utility that operates the plant, hopes someday to remove the fuel, but the technology to do so does not exist today. Experts aren’t even sure where it is – two attempts last year to send in robot cameras failed.

In a worst-case scenario, the fuel would melt through the steel-reinforced concrete containment vessels into the ground, uncontrollably spreading radiation into the surrounding soil and groundwater and eventually into the sea.

For now, pumps pour a constant stream of water into the vessels and TEPCO collects the water that leaks out, as well as groundwater that continues to filter through the plant.

All that contaminated water is filtered to remove some – but not all – of the dangerous radionuclides.  It’s stored onsite in huge steel tanks which now number more than 1,100.

 

Another earthquake or tsunami could wash that contaminated water back into the sea.

“There is a lot more strontium on the site in the tanks than was ever released in 2011,” Buesseler said. “A catastrophe today could change things completely in three to five years on the West Coast.”

In October 2015, Buesseler’s team took new samples from as close as a half-mile away from the nuclear power plant.

Levels there remain elevated, he said, confirming continued releases from the plant.

The levels are thousands of times lower than during the peak in 2011, Buesseler said, and most fish near the plant now are below regulatory limits for radiation.

Still, he said, “The fact that it’s still leaking is always of concern. We don’t want additional radioactivity in the ocean.”

(Photo: Jessica Drysdale, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Five thousand miles across the Pacific, on the West Coast of North America, the disaster continues to play out as well.

Shortly after the earthquake, a tsunami warning was issued for most of the West Coast and all of Oregon. Tsunami surges of as much as 8 feet hit some areas, causing major damage at ports in Brookings and in Crescent City, Calif.

Brookings has received about $7 million in state and federal funding to rebuild.

In late March 2011, radiation showed up in rainwater and milk samples along the West Coast, although at levels officials said were too low to be of health concern.

That was followed, beginning about a year later, by a wave of tsunami debris, including a 188-ton, 66-foot-long dock that arrived on Agate Beach on June 4, 2012.

 

In this 2012 photo, a man looks at the tsunami dock that washed ashore on Agate Beach in Newport. (Photo: AP)

As it dealt with its own cleanup and recovery, Japan made a gift of $5 million to the United States to help clean up tsunami debris.

Of that, Oregon received $250,000, and just finished spending it all in January 2016.

Now, the state will take the focus off of tsunami debris, but continue its push to prevent and clean up all marine debris, said Chris Havel, spokesman for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, which has jurisdiction over the state’s beaches.

“Some of the debris that’s washing ashore is almost certainly from the tsunami, but a lot of it is not,” Havel said. “We’re seeing a lot of stuff that’s just falling off ships from our own community.”

The state still will fund its 211 phone system to take calls about debris. And it still will provide garbage bags and pick them up for disposal. But it’s currently changing its beach signs to read “marine debris watch” rather than “tsunami debris watch,” Havel said.

Initial concerns that the debris might be radioactive were soon put to rest, but the real threat of invasive species remains, said Caren Braby, marine resources program manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The dock, for example, harbored 118 species of foreign marine life.

“It essentially was like a spaceship going out and finding a new planet,” Braby said. “We had built them this transport mechanism to get from there to here.”

None of the species has yet taken a foothold, as far as scientists can tell. And the risk decreases over time, Braby said. But, she said, “Ten, 20, 30 years from now, we might discover one of these species has been able to establish a reproductive population.”

Meanwhile, in the absence of any government testing, Woods Hole’s Buesseler launched a crowd-funded, citizen-science project to track the radiation plume across the Pacific.

Volunteers collect seawater samples from sites all along the West Coast, then send them to Buesseler’s lab in Massachusetts to be tested.

Buesseler also partnered with other organizations to collect samples at sea and along the coast of Japan.

In October 2014, Buesseler reported that a sample taken about 745 miles west of Vancouver, British Columbia, tested positive for cesium-134, the so-called fingerprint of Fukushima because it can only have come from the plant.

The sample also showed higher-than-background levels of cesium-137, another Fukushima isotope that already is present in the world's oceans because of nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s.

In November 2014, Buesseler reported that Fukushima radiation had been identified in 10 offshore samples, including one 100 miles off the coast of Eureka, California.

In April 2015, Buesseler's team announced it had found Fukushima radiation in a sample of seawater taken from a dock on Vancouver Island, B.C., marking the first time it was recorded on West Coast shores.

And in December 2015, Buesseler reported the highest detected level to date, of 11 becquerels per cubic meter of seawater (about 264 gallons) in a sample collected about 1,600 miles west of San Francisco.

Still, he emphasizes, that’s 500 times lower than U.S. government safety limits for drinking water.

From Statesman Journal @ http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/tech/science/environment/2016/03/04/five-years-after-fukushima-crisis-continues/80933932/

For more information about Fukushima see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/Fukushima

- Scroll down through ‘Older Posts’ at the end of each section

Video -  https://youtu.be/yoF-Fp3RlkU

Xtra Image by R. Ayana - https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5489/11191129216_a93f745beb_k.jpg 

Do you LIKE this uniquely informative site?

A genuinely incapacitated invalid maintains, writes, edits, researches, illustrates, moderates and publishes this website from a tiny cabin in a remote forest.

Now that most people use ad blockers, phones and other devices to view, sites like this, we earn an ever shrinking pittance from advertising sponsorship.

This site could really use your help.

Like what you see? Please give anything you can -  

Contribute any amount and receive at least one New Illuminati eBook!

(You can use a card securely if you don’t use Paypal)

Please click below -

And it costs nothing to share this post on Social Media!

Dare to care and share - YOU are our only advertisement!

  

For further enlightening information enter a word or phrase into the random synchronistic search box @ the top left of http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

And see

  New Illuminati on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/the.new.illuminati

New Illuminati Youtube Channel -  https://www.youtube.com/user/newilluminati/playlists

New Illuminati’s OWN Youtube Videos -  

https://www.youtube.com/user/new1lluminati/videos

New Illuminati on Google+ @ For New Illuminati posts - https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RamAyana0/posts

and see https://plus.google.com/115562482213600937809/posts

and google.com/+newilluminati-channel

New Illuminati on Twitter @ www.twitter.com/new_illuminati

New Illuminati on Google Follow - http://www.google.com/friendconnect/settings/edit?smpl=true&st=e%3DAOG8GaCFDeBRZ1yDY2DjCaq61tFDiwO07s%252Fwv3x8%252B%252FJgZJTLx5igbMomJIu3796Ja6n05WaS8qnJ0DLyeGk1q49tLD8m%252FhV1K%252Bq%252BQIOGOwLeWznnm5IGhzjfWzVnq5I4UJr3fw8yk%252B8W2OqwlCbL7BNsW32uouSc79Br%252BkOZQ1Fpzg6J3KMIZkzmg0%252FcPHsWUPqZv845VKS31S%252FbCm8NpINhlK1kDxUdRmcCkT37dIc4RB6PNurjCcd2%252BVkNBveCm4kAgeb8A3Q5hNj6%252FHplvQxKFI%252BW1TYBJVYqHHTKsnBPGcL6wlZdxTUwtfxWU2ZvANJQ%252F%252FUrolBwP7ovb92SZqSWMFJRnN2rsQ%253D%253D%26c%3Dpeoplesense

New Illuminations –Art(icles) by R. Ayana @ http://newilluminations.blogspot.com

The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

DISGRUNTLED SITE ADMINS PLEASE NOTE –

We provide a live link to your original material on your site (and links via social networking services) - which raises your ranking on search engines and helps spread your info further!

This site is published under Creative Commons (Attribution) CopyRIGHT (unless an individual article or other item is declared otherwise by the copyright holder). Reproduction for non-profit use is permitted & encouraged - if you give attribution to the work & author and include all links in the original (along with this or a similar notice).

Feel free to make non-commercial hard (printed) or software copies or mirror sites - you never know how long something will stay glued to the web – but remember attribution!

If you like what you see, please send a donation (no amount is too small or too large) or leave a comment – and thanks for reading this far…

Live long and prosper! Together we can create the best of all possible worlds…

From the New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com