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Fukushima Increased Cesium Levels 100 to 1,000 Times Worldwide ... and 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 Times On the U.S. West Coast
We noted 2 days after the Japanese earthquake that radiation from Fukushima could end up on the West Coast of North America. And see this.
We started tracking the radioactive cesium released by Fukushima within weeks of the accident.
In fact, U.S. nuclear authorities were extremely worried about the west Coast getting hit by Fukushima radiation … but publicly said it was safe.
We reported that Fukushima radiation spread worldwide.
And we’ve documented for years that the failure to test the potentially high levels of radiation hitting North America is a scandal.
Sadly, we were right to be worried …
The Journal Environmental Science & Technology – published by the American Chemical Society – reported last year that airborne levels of radioactive cesium were raised by 100 to 1,000 times (what scientists describe as two to three “orders of magnitude“):
Before the FDNPP accident, average 137Cs levels were typically of 1 ?Bq m−3 in Central Europe and lower average values (<0.3 ?Bq m−3) were characteristic of northern, western and southern Europe.
***
During the passage of contaminated air masses from Fukushima, airborne 137Cs levels were globally enhanced by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude.
Indeed, even hot particles and nuclear core fragments from Fukushima were found to have traveled all the way to Europe.
The French government radiation agency – IRSN – released a video of Fukushima cesium hitting the West Coast of North America. EneNews displays a screenshot from the IRSN video, and quantifies the extreme cesium spikes:
- Cesium-137 levels in 2010: 0.000001 mBq/m³ of Cs-137 (blue writing)
- Cesium-137 levels in Mar. 2011: 1 to 10 mBq/m³ in Western U.S. (orange plume)
- Cs-137 levels increased 1,000,000 – 10,000,000 times after Fukushima
Levels on the West Coast were up to 500 times higher than estimated. Cesium levels from Fukushima were higher than expected worldwide, including in the arctic region of Europe:
Radioactive cesium bioaccumulates in large fish and animals.
The radioactive half life of cesium 137 is usually 30 years. But scientists at the Savannah River National Laboratory say that the cesium at Chernobyl will persist in the environment between 5 and 10 times longer – between 180 and 320 years.
And the Fukushima accident has pumped out some entirely new forms of radioactive materials … in “glassy spheres“, buckyballs, ball-like spheres, and bound to organic matter. Scientists don’t really know how long these new forms will last …
The Day Tokyo Got Blasted by Fukushima Radiation
On March 15, 2011, the winds shifted …
The Fukushima radiation which had been blowing out to sea suddenly turned and hit Tokyo:
The image is a screenshot we took from a video released by the French government radiation agency, IRSN.
As we’ve reported for over 3 years, Tokyo got nailed by radiation. For example:
We knew what happened. Now we know when …
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I concur.
Mustn't panic the sheeple - bad for the Dow and S&P dontcha know?
Re. Don't panic the herd. The IRSN video showing the impact on California is missing from the IRSN page GW links to.
http://www.irsn.fr/EN/publications/thematic-safety/fukushima/Pages/2-fuk...
It must have been there at some point because GW has the screen capture from the video as an image in article.
Can you imagine if a small buis messed up like that how fast all these same regulators would be all over them. Spill a 1/4 cup of fuel into the water fueling your boat. The same regulators would make an example of you so fast.
The newest form of government? Hypocracy.
There is only one scientifically proven way to remove Cesium from the body. Developed in the aftermath of Chernobyl with EU funds Vitapect (Www.vitapect.org) has been studied on over 150000 Europeans and removes 63% of Cesium 134&137
It is just concentrated pectin from apples. How many apples worth of pectin in a daily dose? Any reason not to just eat an apple a day, keep the dentist AND oncologist away?
Or just buy some canning pectin... But I think Troll is wrong. Look up Zeolite, available [overpriced] at any health food store or online. "Not advice, not an endorsement, DYODD, etc."
http://www.zeolite.com/radioactivity.php
The market for Zeolite seems remarkably thin. I find no publicly traded companies of interest.
can you give me the pinksheets ticker symbol for that . BUY THE STAWK!
Mmmmmmm, Cesium. Tasty!!!!
Ah, nothing beats a good ol' pacific tuna sandwich...
Where are the sprinkles?!
We are all Homer Simpsonakes now. Duh!
the International Nuclear Safety Regulator, totally useless before an event and after it (like all regulators), will be right on the case GW
more specifically have the Japenese Govt Ministers, Corporate Execs and Regulators been hauled before a court yet and jailed for nuking part of Japan???
"more specifically have the Japenese Govt Ministers, Corporate Execs and Regulators been hauled before a court yet and jailed for nuking part of Japan???"
To hell with jail- they should be out in the plant with a pail and shovel picking-up the stuff until they croak- which shouldn't take very long!
Those of us in Commiefornia find it convenient that we can now tan BOTH sides in one sitting at the beach.
We can roast marshmellows (sans the government studies) by waving our coat hangers over the new, apparently air breathing fish, that are swarming our coasts.
You really have to feel the sensation of sixty degree water that boils your skin off...
Serf's awesome, Dude!
aYawn, Anyone ever wondered where all the radioactive stuff is coming from originally?
If you spread everything evenly across the globe, it's not a disaster, you are basically at the exact point where it ever was before mining.
It's scare mongering.
There is no safe level of radiation.
Therefore, logically, any increase is dangerous.
Pull your head out from up your arse.
I see you still believe in the 'the solution to pollution is dilution' myth. That was already debunked in the 70s.
Larry wasn't a believer either, that's wanted to concentrate it all in the third world: http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/summers.html
All the dangerous Nuclear Isotopes are MAN MADE in a Nuclear Reactor and need 20 half lives to become mostly dissipated. Plutonium-239 (24,100 year half life) is the most deadly substance known to man, toxic, corrosive, alpha emitter, does not exist in nature (you can figure that out by it's half life), remains for 1/2 million years a danger to all life, cesium-137 (30yhl), strontium-90 (30yhl), absorbed by plant and animal life and the human body mistakes it for calcium and potassium when absorbed in muscle tissue and bone. Iodine 131 has an 8 day half life and is absorbed in the thyroid. They are not natural occurring substances and emit high levels of radiation where they are absorbed, damaging cells leading to death.
Who pays for 600 years, or 1/2 million years of containment? Won't be the nuclear industry, they privatize profits, socialize building cost, decommissioning and all liabilities. They can't even contain Chernobyl and Fukushima in the now, let alone thousands of years from now. Along the way, eternal death and suffering from the radioactive poisons that spread.
Also, wildlife can't read the internet to find out where not to eat, drink, breathe, reproduce. Even humans only get obfuscated information from nuclear corroborative government and media, they hide the reality of the situation.
Congratulations on the stupidest comment ever to appear on ZH. Nobody mines fission products retard, and if they did, they wouldn't be getting them from air and topsoil.
Thanks to Tepco and the U.S. government they were using fission materials consisting of weapons grade plutonium mixed with Uranium, a mixture known as MOX in one of the reactors.
that plutonium is no longer all contained in the reactor. Some is in the ocean, some is in the air, and some is in the soil.
What happens if a solar event shuts down the electric grid and all the reactors go off line and need to be cooled?
I think we saw in Fukushima what our future will be. Nuclear power is not what it is presented to be, it is not safe nor well thought out.
we are all collateral damage deemed necessary for the profits of the corporate gangs that own and operate these defective devices.
"If you spread everything evenly across the globe, it's not a disaster, you are basically at the exact point where it ever was before mining."
So it's kind of like wealth redistribution? It's not really economically disasterous to anyone, just leveling the playing field. Right?
Ill let you perform that unpleasent job of spreading it around the globe. Until then, it is localized and dangerous.
Re: Final Event...spot on, 238 arrows up. Eastern Washington State is where Hanford is located and where the plutonium for the 2nd Nagasaki bomb.....FatMan was fissioned in 1945.
The first nuke's material ....Little Boy..was a uranium enriched bomb enriched at Oak Ridge, Tennessee from U-238 to U-235. Both bombs assembled at Los Alamos and Sandia Labs, New Mexico.
One huge, nasty example of Karmic Return. Check Amazon for one of the best books on the subject: "Lawrence & Oppenheimer" by Nuell Pharr Davis 1968. Page turner, classique.
It was actually natural uranium (99.3% U238, 0.7% U235) that underwent U235 enrichment.
Fat Man was in fact a plutonium bomb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man
Little Boy was a U235 bomb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
Plutonium is a Neutron emitter, affectionately called a real estate bomb by the military. Kill all the people leave the real estate intact.
Obviously you know nothing, or next to nothing about nuclear reactors and/or nuclear materials. You might want to start out by researching the concepts of "isotope separation" and "enrichment" before spouting off with such astonishingly ignorant nonsense. I'm hardy an expert on the subject, but even I know that what you just posted is utter crap.
I was curious if there will be anyone left alive in Japan to host the Oplymics in 2020 ?
Seven orders of magnitude above something that is utterly negligible might well be utterly negligible still, even if it's measureably very much higher. Second, half lives aren't changed by environment. To say that the half life is 30 years, "but it lasts longer in Chernobyl" misleadingly implies that the half life is in error, or that some other factor is at work. Instead, it merely means that it will still be detectable after more than one half life.
"The radioactive half life of cesium 137 is usually 30 years. But scientists at the Savannah River National Laboratory say that the cesium at Chernobyl will persist in the environment between 5 and 10 times longer – between 180 and 320 years."
Why is there a "But" in there? Every 30 years there will be half as much. so at 60 years there will be 25%, 90 years 12.5%, 120 years 6.25%, 150 years 3.125%, 180 years 1.5625%, at which point it may be at "acceptable" levels, whatever that means.
"And the Fukushima accident has pumped out some entirely new forms of radioactive materials … in “glassy spheres“, buckyballs, ball-like spheres, and bound to organic matter. Scientists don’t really know how long these new forms will last …"
Does molecular structure alter half-lives? Or is there some hazard seperate from radiation posed by these structures themselves?
they are having trouble desolving these
“glassy spheres“, buckyballs, ball-like spheres
hot acids ,not getting it done...
persistant you long time ...
"Does molecular structure alter half-lives? Or is there some hazard seperate from radiation posed by these structures themselves?"
Physics for J-School Majors 101 clearly explains that isotope decay rates are influenced by who buys your freelance article and who screams the loudest on your video footage.
there are many daughter isotopes
that travel with the cesium ..
imagine they are off the charts too..
Please. It's bad enough already without overstating the case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_caesium
Caesium (Cs) or Cesium as it is spelled in the United States has 40 known isotopes. The atomic masses of these isotopes range from 112 to 151. Only one isotope,133Cs, is stable. The longest-lived radioisotopes are 135Cs with a half-life of 2.3 million years, 137Cs with a half-life of 30.1671 years and 134Cs with a half-life of 2.0652 years. All other isotopes have half-lives less than 2 weeks, most under an hour.