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What Fukushima Radiation 100 Miles Off California Looks Like
While no US Federal Agency sees fit to monitor ocean radioactivity in coastal waters, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) has taken on the task of keeping the information flowing in a world of 'promises' that everything will be ok. As WHOI reports this week, scientists have detected the presence of small amounts of radioactivity from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident 100 miles (150 km) due west of Eureka, California.
Since the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant meltdown in 2011, the radioactive plume has traveled west across the Pacific, propelled largely by ocean currents and being diluted along the way. For now, the levels of Fukushima radiation hitting the West Coast is below where one might expect any measurable risk to human health or marine life, according to international health agencies. The findings confirm data earlier this year showing cesium-134 traveled across the Pacific to the coast of Canada.
...
"We detected cesium-134, a contaminant from Fukushima, off the northern California coast. The levels are only detectable by sophisticated equipment able to discern minute quantities of radioactivity," said Ken Buesseler, a WHOI marine chemist, who is leading the monitoring effort.
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The amount of cesium-134 reported in these new offshore data is less than 2 Becquerels per cubic meter (the number of decay events per second per 260 gallons of water). This Fukushima-derived cesium is far below where one might expect any measurable risk to human health or marine life, according to international health agencies.
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"We don't know exactly when the Fukushima isotopes will be detectable closer to shore because the mixing of offshore surface waters and coastal waters is hard to predict."
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These results confirm prior data described at a scientific meeting in Honolulu in Feb. 2014 by John Smith, a scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, who found similar levels on earlier research cruises off shore of Canada.
Buesseler believes the spread of radioactivity across the Pacific is an evolving situation that demands careful, consistent monitoring of the sort conducted from the Point Sur.
* * *
Because no U.S. federal agency is currently funding monitoring of ocean radioactivity in coastal waters, Buesseler launched a crowd-funded, citizen-science program to engage the public in gathering samples and to provide up-to-date scientific data on the levels of cesium isotopes along the west coast of North America and Hawaii. Since January 2014, when Buesseler launched the program, individuals and groups have collected more than 50 seawater samples and raised funds to have them analyzed. The results of samples collected from Alaska to San Diego and on the North Shore of Hawaii are posted on the website http://OurRadioactiveOcean.org.
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Glow On
Don't worry....Governor Brown will enact billions in new taxes on the middle class to pay for the clean up which will be run by one of his campaign contributors
Lol with Brown he is more likely to place the resulting three eyed simpsons fish under environmental protection.
"I strictly forbid any radiation clean up, on the grounds that it will destroy the natural habitat of the fukushima harbor trout"
Nah, they'll just raise the safety limit 1000 fold and declare it good for you. Have you gotten your radiation shot yet?
Cesium-134 isn't that like good for your teeth or something?
I'm normally on board with ZH, but the anti-nuclear propaganda is just stupid.
...I'm too busy protecting myself from the Ebola virus.
Whatever happened to E V?
It was superseded by the new Kardashian app.
3-11-2011. 33 bitchez. fuku was a masonic hit
OK, now for a few facts to spice up the stew for any who are interested:
1. Why Cs134? - because there is already a good supply of .Cs137 in the ocean from a number of other, older sources. Cs134 decays to half in about 2 years, so one can be almost certain what they are measuring is mostly from Fuku.
2. Does that mean no Cs137? Absolutely not. Because it decays much more slowly, and was produced probably in similar amounts to Cs134, there is likely to be 2-4 times as much Cs137. Also a very dangerous isotope in large enough amounts as it replaces potassium in the body and irradiates you from the inside.
3.Other isotopes? For sure. I personally worry much more about strontium 90, which accumulates in the bones and stays for many years. Bad stuff.
4. Are the levels high? No. Seawater has quite a lot of radioactive potassium that occurs naturally. Just part of life, but we really do not want to add a bunch more to our bodies.
Doesn't cesium-134 build up in the system of say... a fish? Which then is eaten by bigger fish... which eventually winds up in the Fillet O Fish?
There's fish in Filet-O-Fish? News to me...
Pelican - Yes, for sure bioaccumulation is the big worry. The bigger the fish, the bigger the problem. Also a problem heavy metals like mercury.
Not only Cs134, but also the other isotopes.
If nuclear is smart then why won't any insurance company underwrite it?
Do you like socialized insurance for private gains?
Nuclear is safer than every other power source except hydro. Modern nukes are also very different than 70s plants. Also, you can get insurance on a nuclear plant so I'm not sure what you're talking about.
A lot of those plants still in operation though, including Fukushima Daichi, are the 70s era plants you talk about.
I'm not necessarily anti-nuclear but feel nudlear accidents are unacceptable.
More people die in any given year from coal than have ever died in the entire history of nuclear plants. Fear of nukes come from non-scientists who can't differentiate between nuclear bombs and nuclear power.
OK, the first nuclear power plant was commissioned in 1954 so when you say "the entire history of nuclear plants" you may need to rephrase to "the very limited history of nuclear plants".
Sure, people may die of side effects from the burning of coal. When nuclear power goes wrong, however, the consequences are essentially forever and have the potential to destroy large swathes of the ecosystem. How long before the next Fukushima? And then the next. And the next.
We may not know the extent of the consequences of Fukushima for another few years yet.
If there is a third world war then each countries domestic nuclear power will become a strategic target. One Fukushima then may become a hundred Fukushima's and I doubt the ecosystem could even remotely tolerate this.
Nuclear power has already sealed the fate of the human race. We're just too short-sighted to realise this.
That may be currently true, but since some radioisotopes have half-lives measuring in thousands of years and coal is being phased out, the count will be headed the other way. Again for centuries to come, not just when the coal firebox burns out.
Hell the gubermit is moving the goal posts so often that they will soon end up behind the line of scrimmage.
Well, Calvinball rulez are more like suggestions!
Can't the fed just print a few billion clown notes to use as free paper towels, so we can just sop up the radiation?
yeah, maybe they aren't detecting a whole lot (yet) on the West coast. But that doesn't mean the sea life isn't much further out where radiation would be strogest. They're swimming through it, absorbing it. From plankton on up to krill, anchovies, sardines...all the lower food chain that the stuff we like to eat...eats. Salmon, tuna, shark, whatever else. Crab. How much radioactive shit have the King, Opelio, and Dungeness crab been eating that dies from above and sifts down to the bottom for them to feed on, ay?
And this shit isn't over by a long shot, bitchez. This has been going on non-stop for nearly 4 years and it's never going to stop. The accumulation in everything is only going to continue to get stronger and build up over time. Once cesium gets into grass that things like cattle graze on, etc. then all beef and milk cows get it into their systems. And that means we're all next in line after that.
We already know they've found verified isotopes of shit in Boston that came directly from the explosion of those cores right after the flood. All the way to the East coast very quickly. That didn't get there in ocean currents...
Remember everything from the East flows to the West via the jet stream. All those storms that start in the pacific and cruz by Japan then head over to Alaska and Canada and then down to the lower 48 states, etc.
That's a whole other fucking big deal, folks. And it's never going to end.
Aw fuck it...stack phyzz silver. Shit's on a little rocket ride today...grab some phyzz now.
And oh yeah...sell your Red Lobster stawks too. I feel sorry for any seafood restaurants going forward. They're doomed.
Gee, that sounds very similar to what the US nuclear industry did in allowing its nuclear plants to go from a design life of 30 years, to 60 years. Go figure.
Fukushima: coming to a reactor in a city near you US.
Yep, and we sure are fucked as a species if there's ever a large scale power outage or EMP. Imagine the backup generators out at every nuclear plant at once.
Even the newer plants need to be replaced by a design that automatically shuts down when cooling is stopped.
Humans are simply too careless and stupid to sensibly manage nuclear energy.
The sushi at this restaurant sure does have an interesting glow to it... the chef must know what he's doing...eat up
Try the California Low Dose Roll - not so strong but the flavor seems to last forever.
Then check this out: "High Radiation Levels Found In North American Seafood: Fukushima"
This link is also great for live radiation readings in US and Canada: http://radiationnetwork.com/
Here's a scientific prediction of the Fuku-Plume
And here are 28 Myths debunked.
2 Bq/m3?
This is cause for alarm? lol
pods
It's all about bioaccumulation at this point. WHOI are paid shills for the nuke death merchants.
OMG EBOLA!
Sure it is. And Cesium (or Caesium for our friends across the pond) 134 is a beta emitter. So you have to injest this material for it to be dangerous.
Let's take a worst case scenario:
You decide to make a big ass salad in the from the worst area around Chernobyl 3 months after the accident. So you eat a kilo of salad, which has 0.9 KBq of radiation from Cs, and 5.6 kBq from Iodine. This results in a dose of:
http://www.laradioactivite.com/en/site/pages/Dose_Factors.htm
People will lose their minds about this phantom menace, but will gleefully grill their meats on a hot flame grill, oblivious to an ACTUAL danger, heterocyclic amines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterocyclic_amine
To each his own though. Freak out as much as you so desire.
pods
Cancer morbidity risk for I-129 is .322 per billion per picocurie (or per 27 becquerels). Ingesting 5.6 kBq (207 pCi) increases the risk of contracting cancer to 67 in a billion people over a lifetime from that salad's iodine.
C-137 morbidity risk is .0374 per billion per picocurie. Ingesting 900 Bq (33 pCi) increases the risk of contracting cancer to about 1 in a billion people over a lifetime from that salad's cesium.
That salad has potassium in it, but the radiation damage isn't going to cause any excess cancers - that's part of the 'normal' cancer rate. Likewise background radiation isn't going to cause excess cancers either because it's part of the 'normal' cancer rate. The normal cancer morbidity rate over a lifetime is 200 million per billion.
So your risk only increased from 20% to 20.0000068%. The trick is to eat only that one salad from Chernobyl while holding your breath and floating several meters above the ground there, and then immediately flying to the Southern hemisphere an never exposing yourself to any more excess man-made radiation ever again.
If you ate a Chernobyl salad every few days (say 100 days a year) for 10 years, then your chances of getting cancer went up to 20.0068% in your lifetime.
Yet when you look at increased cancer rates for cities in Belarus:
You see that 80,000 more people out of every million did get cancer on top of the 200,000 per million 'normal' expected cases. And those additional cases are predominantly soft-tissue cancers that are more fatal than 'the average' type of cancers. Belarus has about ten million people, BTW. So that's three-quarters of a million more people with cancer there directly because of the accident.
If you look back at atomic testing, Chernobyl and Fukushima, what does that mean for the U.S.? All that increased morbidity is cumulative. Ten thousand additional cancers? A million additional cancers? And that's assuming the 20% rate is 'natural'. Scientists argue that before we started spewing radionuclides around the planet, the 'natural' cancer rate per lifetime was more on the order of 5 - 10%. Nobody can prove that scientifically, but that seems more reasonable than 20% even considering our longer lifespan.
The difference is that I love my hetero-cyclic amines and chose to dose myself for the tasty carnivorous delights. I don't have any choice in being dosed by industrial accidents and am not rewarded wtih a juicy steak in return for the excess risk. If TEPCO sends me one of those gift boxes of 12 USDA Prime Porterhouses from Kansas, then I'm willing to call it even.
Tough to pin breast cancer increases solely on radiation. Many of those breast cancers are hormone sensitive cancers, and with the spread of high dose hormonal birth control, breast and cervical cancers skyrocketed around the globe. Hence, the new, low dose birth control. Not sure if Yaz is popular in Belarus yet.
No doubt inhaling radioactive iodine is gonna do a ton of damage. As is eating produce, meats and such from highly contaminated areas. Chernoybyl was a disaster, but those in Belarus didn't have a Pacific ocean between them and the reactors as the US does.
I would expect to see higher rates for areas in close proximity to the area (as you have shown) but I don't think that those increases can solely be blamed on radiation. Diet will surely play a large role, and as the nations become more prosperous, the higher cancer rates climb.
As for HCA's, well I had some BBQ today, so I am guilty as well. Just shooting for perspective is all.
pods
You're just not seeing the big picture.
WWIII.
500 domestic nuclear power plants scattered across the northern hemisphere.
Strategic target.
Fukushima multiplied dozens of times.
Does this put your barbecue analogy in perspective.
Why don't you compare nuiclear power to microwaving in a non-microwave safe plastic container. Silly.
You can't possibly be so foolish to think domestic nuclear power won't become THE FIRST TARGET in all out war.
The fate of the human race was sealed when the first nuclear power plant was commissioned.
IT IS INEVITABLE.
"Normal cancers"....
Nice.
Look at the spike in soft tissue cancers once the polio vaccine was developed. Still out there, rocking on.
Monkey business.
C'mon - Salk and Sabin were geniuses. "Let's grow polio virus in green monkey kidney cells for our vaccines. What could possibly go wrong with that? Sure bits of 40 other primate virii get mixed up in the soup. They probably won't hurt you."
Other geniuses: "Yellow Fever vaccine? Hmmm... let's culture it in mice brain tissue. Murine leukemia? Nah - you must have been a smoker."
Still other geniuses: "Attenuated live virus polio vaccinations are harmless as long as you're immune system is healthy. Kids in Uganda getting polio from the vaccinations? Well, hell - if they already have HIV they're going to die anyways, right? We're doing God's work here!"
And even more geniuses: "Babies dying from SIDS after DPT shots? Nonsense - Show me one medical examiner report where they coded the death as SIDS from DPT! Oh, there is no code for that? See - proves my point! It's SO improbable they never gave it a code. Get that brat over here right now and let me stick 'em!"
Yeah, when I saw the 2 Bq/m3 figure, it was obvious that WHOI had to use some sophisticated measuring equipment. That m3 of seawater has (whips out circular slide rule) ... 13 KBq of potassium 40. Coulda dropped a decimal in there somewhere, so don't quote me.
As for that iodine, every atom of it ends up in your thyroid gland. So there's that. It's a much more potent poison because it accumulates.
"...As for that iodine, every atom of it ends up in your thyroid gland..."
I think its something like 40x the soft-tissue concentration and higher than that in kids and females. Most additional iodine will go to the thyroid, but not all of it. You also have a pound or two of intestinal flora that will preferentially grab iodine for the carbohydrate matrix mucus that it calls home. Your lymph system and immune system also have elevated concentrations. It's always been far easier to measure thyroid organ concentrations than a diffuse organ like your lymph system.
the radioactive water flowing over the fuel cores DIRECTLY into the pacific ocean is assurdedly Not at 2 bq per m3 -
here's the recent water sample from groundwater flowing into the ocean at fukushima -
" TEPCO officials say water taken on Wednesday from a well had 460,000 becquerels of cesium per liter (Bq/l)… another well contained 424,000 becquerels. Officials say those levels are 800 to 900 times the previous peak."
thats an 800 Times increase over a few weeks -
this stuff is just the leading edge of a problem that is going to get worse and worse -
any large fish that bioaccumulate and swin large distances will be TOAST -
Count the Orca's as one - nice fish they were pretty cool you can tell the grandkids when they're gone in 20 years - Google Puget sound orcas" they havent had a baby orca Survive since 2011
So I won't drink any well water from Fukushima either.
Look, I will freak out when it is warranted, but this ain't it.
pods
If Dilution is the solution to the Fukushima pollution then pollution is the solution to the dilution of the collusion.
Bring it. You can't hide three eyed californians.
thank you woodyg, you and Pway do great work.
The puget sound orcas bodies are hazardous waste when they die. It's from the PCBs used until the 70s. It never bio degrades and contaminates the bottom of puget sound and every water body near human habitation.
Pretty stupid and dishonest to blame it on fuku radiation, which didn't even make it across the ocean until this year.
If you really want to worry about pollution, worry about chemicals - especially herbicides, pesticides and agricultural fertilizer. Fuku is just the latest insult to the planet. The rest have been going on for a century.
My aura smiles and never frowns...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoA_zY6tqQw
It's amazing that Jello Biafra was speaking out against California politicians in the early 80s (through music and interviews) and those same people are still in office.
He probably votes democrat now. It's hip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od9D6TECSa0
It would be racist for us to keep Japanese radiation out.
Can you please try not to slant this discussion any further?
pods
Oh, boy! Pretty soon I'll be able to swim in the ocean and watch the 3-headed fish! Yay!
Meanwhile the libturds and Dems prattle on about fictional globull warming,
I'm still wearing the same particulate respirator from March 2011 and taking daily doses of potassium iodide. I feel fine.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDR6L9iCwr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od9D6TECSa0
The catch of the day is RainGlow trout and bigger than usual. Don't mind the color, goes well with green eggs and ham.
Will it still be a small amount when all that Plutonium starts washing ashore?
Yes,
But readings of bioaccumulated Pu will be ugly.
+1 Most articles like this seem to skip the bioaccumulation angle
Woods Hole is usually pretty reliable though I don't think they factored in the food chain issue for human consumption of fish. Then there's the question of feeding grounds and migration. Do tuna feed near Japan and then migrate eastward where they are caught for the American market? I don't know that part. If they do feed near Japan in their youth, then they are certainly getting higher doses.
Theory ---> YOU <--- Reality
Images are better than words: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qTZXYiVGtkM/TgIzUfBhe_I/AAAAAAAAAks/PHR_i2fbdI...
A whole lot of pacific sea creatures are dieing. Just saying they know not why.
I pick up pennies....
They do know why asshole. It's mercury, PCBs and over fishing. Been happening for decades. But imbeciles like you just heard of it. LOL.
Relax, 2500 years from now, you'll hardly knew it was there...
It's not that long... Jezus plus 500 years.
actually plutonium has a half life of 24,000 years - so everything will be peachy clean in about 200,000 years -
dont worry about genetic mutations though
Nobody will notice it because it's already the state of plastic surgery.
And who doesn't want to see three breasted woman?
The mutations will be justified. THe future guber critters will have assholes where they belong, on their face where their mouth was.
i'm thinking the "greys" are actually Humans from the future - had to move underground and thru genetic mutation and living for generations underground wa-la humans look like aliens....
The greys can't speak. Hmmm, if all the bitchy wives of the future can't speak.... Hmmmmm. Sounds pretty good. Peace on earth, at last.
Our new little friend Homer's Ghost already is there.
May all the rads peacefully fall on the Left Coast Loons who drone on about the environment and global warming.
Why pick on Cali, my favorite land of fruit and nuts.
The minute you are born you are marked for death.
Such is life.
Unfortunately, it will probably be a slow death for many.
I thought california was Spanish for "slow death". Must be Castillian.
The only good news is it is close to those child rapists in Zollywood and Zio-TV.
Hey Freddie,
What's on TV tonight?
round up the usual suspects . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0UiEt7H7wg
Glowing seas are such a rare and beautiful sight. And the dead fish on the sea shore is free food. Luckily, that water cannot evaporate and fall as rain as California is in its worst drought in a century. Everything turns out for the best in the land of the free.
And you can now surf year round sans wetsuit!
Nice warm Pac waters. And they say I'm a half empty type...
We are 'Fuk'-ed
Time to get the whale watchers fired up!
yeah, much safer swimming in New Yawk Harbor..
Obamacare for radiation, i get it
Great prices on Ahi Tuna coming our way.
At least the drinkable water won't be radiated...
But in a way it's bad... It's where silicon valley is... City of Apps... 99% of the American economy...
When did it drop?
You've got drinking water?
Thought Cali was on Brawndo rations so Silicon Valley can cool their data centers?
July 6, 2014
The EPA is raising the radiation threat level by a factor of 350. That may sound unbelievable but it is assuredly a good thing: The previous limits were far lower than science justified and caused hundreds of billions of dollars of economic loss to America and the world.
http://reason.com/archives/2014/07/06/raising-the-epa-radiation-limit-wi...
Wha should sound more unbelivable is on the same EPA.GOV page: "Some scientists assert that low levels of radiation are beneficial to health (this idea is known as hormesis)."
Assertion, no proof, but hey, there's so much corporate interest so let's KEEP IT LIKE THIS.
The effect of radiation hormesis is small, if it exists so there's a lot of controversy over whether the studies that have looked at this are picking up signal or noise. Nobody wants to be the guy who says radiation is good for you when the data come in that you approved standards that yield X surplus cancer deaths a year.
......... " Sr-90 binds to DNA, and is far more dangerous for this reason that nuclides that are simply in cytoplasm. Uranium is also very dangerous for this reason.
2. Transmutation, where the radioactive decay of a radio-element changes it into a different element (e.g. Carbon-14 changing to Nitrogen), has mutagenic effects far greater than would be expected on the basis of “absorbed dose”. This has been known since the 1960s but it has been ignored by risk agencies such as ICRP, UNSCEAR and BEIR.
DNA is made from Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Nitrogen. Carbon-14 and tritium (radioactive hydrogen) become incorporated into DNA through eating and drinking contaminated products. When the carbon-14 atom in the DNA decays into nitrogen, the chemical bond is broken, and DNA damage results. Similarly, tritium decays into helium. This goes for plants, as well as animals and humans. " ............. - Bobby1
Left unsaid is the fact that Fukushima continues to spew huge quantities of radionuclides into the air, ocean and groundwater, three nuclear cores have escaped containment and are underground somewhere, and the technology to clean up this mess is still at the wishful thinking stage.
Don't worry keep moving ...
The entire site is awash in gamma shine, cobalt-60 speaks toward this as neutrons convert stainless into cobalt-60.... Strontium-90 has just started washing out to sea and that will last another 50,000 days .....
And tepco's latest date shows test wells near the coastline contain Strontium-90 26,000,000 times e.p.a limits. ( 7,800,000 Bq/L Sr-90 )
But......but...... can't the Fed just print more days? I mean, like, ya know....thats more than a year. Yikes.
I say we nuke it.
Problem is they are putting water on it.
You never, ever do that.
Baking soda.
Colorado cops show off cannabis harassment tactics for CNBC crew, give tickets for cigarettes
Nobody gives a fuck.
Quit spammin yer shitty blog.
The lunacy out here in Cali is beyond compare. You've ever seen such a concentration of soy-poisoned, Prius worshipping, white guilt ridden, NPR obeying Wealthy Shitbots hellbent on turning this once wonderful place into a Mexican utopia.
Every election here is fraudulent. Everything here is designed to separate you from your money and keep you of the mind that you deserve to be tortured....while the airplanes chemtrail the bejesus out of us. Neato.
To show you how totally fucked up this place is, a poll taken after the recent elections showed Feinstein and Boxer (who have been Cal senators since the Jurassic period) easily winning again in the next election. The same poll, asking if the state would be better off with new senators, resulted in 80% saying that yes, the state would be better off with new senators. WTF??????
Someone put a priming charge in the fucking San Andreas and just end it.
ok, who wants some iodine pills? anyone? anyone?
Sorry.
Potassium iodide / iodate tablets will not help here AT ALL.
These pills help saturate the thyroid with safe, stable iodine in order to prevent the uptake of radioactive iodine, PERIOD.
Since 99.999999% of the radioactive iodine was released during the initial stages of the disaster and already out of the atmosphere,
buying the pills now, for this emergency, is a complete waste.
You are better off buying popcorn.
Ummm, popcorn.
I have KI tablets but that is cause I am downwind of a reactor. Great as a first measure as you are getting the fuck out of dodge (while wearing a P100 respirator, which I also have). No use now, unless you are prone to goiters.
pods
Doesn't take much time for "minute" particles to build up in the food chain.
A million little fish and krill absorb the radiation, 100K bigger fish eat them, a thousand bigger fish eat them and you have concentrated doses.
I've stopped eating tuna fish and worry about Salmon and Oysters from the Pacific Northwest. You can't tell me that shit isn't going to do damage.
that shit isn't going to do damage. hows that? kind of still better, even though a lie, then what we get from the useless 535 eh.
Cesium-134 has a half life of 2 years. But what about plutonium with a half life of 80 million years?
The fucking reactor has been leaking into the pacific for like 3 years.
What do you expect? the Reactor is still leaking .
Radiation Poisoning doesn't take much PPM in a salt water solution to spread.... the Pacific Ocean is pretty much dead.... 1/3rd of the earths waters have become bitter/poison.
I refuse to buy any Sea food from The Gulf or the Pacific, unless it says it was fished out of the Atlantic I don't touch it.
I am lucky in the sense that I don't like Sea-Food anyway for the most part.
The nuclear weapons tests in the ocean spread radiation in the oceans also. Bikini Atoll, etc. This site says there's nothing to worry about:
https://www.bikiniatoll.com/whatrad.html
Nuclear explosions, even ones at Hiroshima and Nagassaki were designed to produce minimal fallout. The whole idea is to have as much matter react with itself as possible. Any leftovers are purely unintentional coming from the fact fission is never 100% efficient. Nuclear reactors are a whole different story, since they run a controlled throttled down reaction, there is a lot of unused fuel at different stages of decay. When the reactor leaks that fuel gets out into the world where it continues to decay naturally, emitting radiation, but without causing a chain reaction necessary to clean up at least some of the mass. You get a whole cocktail of poison. The result?
Yes, we cancer!
Allot fo dumb voters in Cali , so who cares
Why is the USSA(israel) so concerned about Iran when it's their proxy Japan who are causing untold disaster?
Are there not FINES & SANCTIONS for this sort of Flagrant Abuse?
Bah Humbug
thanks Japan! you fucking fucks
Somebody get a case of gatoraide and some triple antibiotic salve over to George Washington's place. If he's read this already he's up and wanked hisself raw and dehydrated.
Get ready...they are already preparing to regulate the internet in order to replace reports like this with happy Black Friday "news" stories. And soon they will outlaw Geiger counters; it's part of the new Freedom From Residual Radiation Innitiative. If you can't measure it, it's not there.
Hey! Anybody want a tuna fish sandwich?
I suppose this means I have to stop drinking seawater?
You can still drink it. You just aren't allowed to barf it back up.
Aw man, that's half the fun.
Hey, you just gave me an idea. Seawater bulimia clinics. Just perfect for the coast of California. The Japanese just ruined my venture!
It says no risk.
Interesting that to a casual observer, the colors on the graphic seem to suggest a more pronounced issue. But those are just water temps.
Pull me up a 19 foot bluefish with 3 heads and 22 fins and I'll pay more attention...
If I wasn't so jaded I would see that heatmap as a way to show how isotopes are moved in the ocean.
But I am jaded, so it appears that the heatmap, as well as the gigantic amount of radiation of up to TWO decays per second per cubic meter of water is nothing but clickbait.
pods
When dining out in the future, we may all be wearing radiation detectors.
Only our bullshit protectors warn us now.
I meant to say dying out...
Has the EPA sent their armed police force to talk to Japan yet?
Dead liberals. Hipacracy will end in tree hugging, climate change, battery garbage sites, and a unprecedented earthquake to wipe out the United Nations Agenda 21. Last minute carbon credits will not save these fucker's
The upcoming sun CME will wipe your asses off the map. Dead hippie liberals will become the dinosaurs of bullshit. Tell us how your going to stop the CME flare? Which triggers the earthquake..bye bye California derivatives holding pension dick weeds.
;)
Are you drinking your urine again?
Does this mean coastal properties will decrease in price?
why does my thyroid hurt??
Fuk could not have picked a better state to destroy...
So there's the Cesium, but there's also seawater that is now increasingly radioactive. As someone noted above, its the bioaccumulation, and the fact this is an ongoing leak, not a one-time event, that makes it a genuine problem.
Right now there isn't that much Rve Ce or iodine falling on you when it rains in NYC:
http://www.livescience.com/13507-infographic-japan-radiation-levels.html
But in 5 years, it's going to be considerably more than that - that's basically the issue. But the rain won't be the problem so much as your food and water... which is, by the way, already killing you.
You won't have a sexy and sudden cluster of deaths, but trending upward thyroid and breast and other cancers, more birth defects, and more radioactivity in sea life, then soil and ground water.
It's death, drip dripping into the food chain and water supply. so sure, don't panic - but don't think for a second this isn't the worst man made disaster ever... it's just happening slowly.
One interesting question is what interplay there might be between increasing background radioactivity and increasing man-made microwaves.
We're all being cooked and mutated, very slowly, but very throroughly.
I, for one, will welcome our new insect overlords.
Stay thirsty, my friends.
Increased thyroid cancers due to I-131? Not unless you're ingesting it at the source -- it has a half-life of 8-ish days.
A short half life makes it dangerous if enough quantity is ingested, not the trace amounts detected by an energy signature in background radiation. (No, they don't actually detect the element itself in these quantities. I-131 is only detected by its decay energy signature. You could likely detect I-131 in table salt if you waited long enough with a lead-lined box.)
Al Bundy's dream come true Pacific Lake Chicamocomico.
Who cares if the Pacific Ocean and California are a nuclear and drought infested wasteland! We have REAL problems that require a militarized BLM assualt on a rancher in some shithole desert ranch! And some Texans to steal some land from because the river changed and some hog farmers that need some military assualt too because we dont like the hybrid pig he is raising....it's all about priorities!
Somebody better start caring .
Nuri is dumping all that radioactive material over your wheat baskets .
Nuri picked it up right from Japan's doorstep and is delivering it to Chicago and the midwest .
See https://www.academia.edu/9204956/Slingshot_Atmospheric_Rivers
Or are you willing to let Chicago go the route of Chernobyl ?
It will make a nifty game preserve .
......Or are you willing to let Chicago go the route of Chernobyl ?....
Absofuckinglutely.
Why would anyone, believe anything that TEPCO has to say? My husband's a biochemist and, yes, this problem is going to get worse. And I live on the west coast. Don't eat fish anymore at the insistence of my doctor. She feels there's no reason to take chances, particularly as Fukupshima isn't going anywhere. The Pacific will become more and more toxic because TEPCO has admitted that the technology to stop the radioactivity leaking into the ocean doesn't even exist, yet!
The level of scientific illiteracy in ZH articles and comments never ceases to amaze me. Two Becquerels (two events) per square meter is far less than what the human body absorbs in a day just by walking outside and enjoying the atmospheric scattering and universe decay products.
No, really, there's nothing to panic about. Yeah, it's radiation. Yeah, it's off the California coast. And, yeah, it's insignificant.
If the issue were ingesting heavy metals like Ca-134, there might be an issue. But Ca-134 decays to Ba-134 (stable form of barium) with two gamma rays, which your body is able to eliminate by chelation. Again, an insignificant problem, similar to drinking the barium goop for an gastrointestinal study.
People who died before the atomic age have no Strontium 90 in their bones and teeth. The rest of us have plenty and it is increasing. If we are cremated it is released back into the environment and re enters the food chain. It causes lukemias and bone cancers, particularly in the young.
Fukushima is releasing huge amounts of this radionuclide and many others into the ocean and atmosphere. This will continue for centuries. It is a disaster for all living things.
Plutonium should sink in water as it is a heavy element. Unlikely it will travel across the ocean to reach the shores of California.
I'm going to get one of those Booty Enhancements and fill those buns with Iodine! That should stop that radiation!
Radionuclides have been spewing into the water, AND ATMOSPHERE, since Fukushima went belly up. No end in site. Talk about the Pacific ocean diluting all this radiation is bad science. If the oceans were good at diluting radioactive waste, why doesn't every nuclear nation start dumping all their waste there? The only thing dumping radioactive waste into the ocean does is provide it a medium for spreading it around at ground level. As time goes on, there will be spots on the beaches of California where there is no detectable radiation and another spot 2 miles away that has very high concentrations of radioactivity. You'll have pockets like this everywhere. These "scientists" who say otherwise are bought and paid for. Don't care if some Harvard or MIT PHD gets on here and tells me I'm stupid or I don't know what I'm talking about...... the fact is that the Harvard/MIT PHD has it in his or her best interest to downplay the seriousness of what's happening at Fukushima because they get LARGE amounts of money from the US government for carrying out all sorts of projects. They don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. And enough with only talking about cesium this, cesium that. Cesium is ONE, just ONE of the HUNDREDS of horrible things being released from Fuku every second of every day. Reactor 3 was a MOX reactor (maybe 4 was as well?) and when it went, it released uranium and plutonium into the environment. In case you don't know, those are some really bad isotopes. Somebody else mentioned it as well..... as time goes on, the government will just keep raising the "safety level" of exposure to this garbage. I see an explosion of cancers on the west coast 10-15 years from now, not to mention in Japan since there are stories of the molten cores melting down into Tokyo's water table. No more safe drinking water for the citizens of that city. Oh well...... there a football game tonight or a Kardashian wedding?