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Fukushima Radiation Increasing In North American Waters … Detected Along a Stretch of More Than 1,000 Miles
Painting by Jonathan Raddatz
Ken Buesseler – head scientist at Woods Hole in Massachusetts, one of the world’s top ocean science institutions – has been measuring Fukushima radiation off of the coasts of Japan and North America.
Because governments ditched their radiation testing programs after the Fukushima nuclear accident, Buesseler has to crowdfund his monitoring efforts.
Woods Hole announced last week:
Scientists monitoring the spread of radiation in the ocean from the Fukushima nuclear accident report finding an increased number of sites off the US West Coast showing signs of contamination from Fukushima. This includes the highest detected level to date from a sample collected about 1,600 miles west of San Francisco. [Fukushima is a little more than 5,000 miles from San Francisco. So this bit of radiation has already made it some 68% of the way from Fukushima to the West Coast of California] The level of radioactive cesium isotopes in the sample, 11 Becquerel’s per cubic meter of seawater (about 264 gallons), is 50 percent higher than other samples collected along the West Coast so far, but is still more than 500 times lower than US government safety limits for drinking water, and well below limits of concern for direct exposure while swimming, boating, or other recreational activities. [However, the government raised allowable radiation levels after Fukushima … “moving the goalposts” on what is safe. A well-developed body of science actually says that no amount of radiation exposure is safe.]
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Through a citizen science sampling effort, Our Radioactive Ocean, that [Buesseler] launched in 2014, as well as research funded by the National Science Foundation, Buesseler and his colleagues are using sophisticated sensors to look for minute levels of ocean-borne radioactivity from Fukushima. In 2015, they have added more than 110 new samples in the Pacific to the more than 135 previously collected and posted on the Our Radioactive Ocean web site.
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The recent findings reported by Buesseler agree with those reported by scientists who are part of the group Kelp Watch and by the team of Canadian scientists working under the InFORM umbrella. While Buesseler’s work focuses on ocean chemistry and does not involve sampling of biological organisms, the InFORM scientists have done sampling of fish and have not seen any Fukushima cesium in fish collected in British Columbia.
Reuters points out:
Radiation from Japan nuclear disaster spreads off U.S. shores… and contamination is increasing at previously identified sites… Tests of hundreds of samples of Pacific Ocean water confirmed that Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant continues to leak… The latest readings measured the highest radiation levels outside Japanese waters to date some 1,600 miles (2,574 km) west of San Francisco. The figures also confirm that the spread of radiation to North American waters is not isolated to a handful of locations, but can be detected along a stretch of more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) offshore.
Indeed, the West Coast of North American could be slammed by Fukushima radiation in the near future.
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They actually have moved quite a lot, the coastline is already receiving low level radiation from Fukushima.
The higher level stuff could be proof that the leakages from Fukushima Daiichi are not only continuing but getting more severe.
As the cores burn their way out of the containment vessels, more of the surface area of the core is exposed to the water table which dumps into the Pacific Ocean.
Just waiting on another biq quake to rupture all those thousands of storage towers on the nuclear reactor site.
Did they all die?
Dude, this has less to do with Fukushima and more to do with Cheney, Halliburton, et al dumping nuke waste offshore. Do some more homework. I will not do it for you ..
Scandals are not mutually exclusive. If you have something of substance with respect to the Halliburton allegation, please post it and let ZHers crunch it.
You're saying having 3 reactor cores leaking into the Pacific for 4 years (and more 20 years to come)... makes no difference?
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE! (Just like we did after TMI, just like we did after Chernobyl...)
Standard Disclaimer: Would you just get on with it already?
Government lied about exposure to deliberately released radioactive emissions from Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the 40's and 50's.
Government lied about nuclear waste storage tanks leaking at hanford for decades.
Government lied about cleanup costs, time and money required to do same at Hanford and still does, to this day.
Government lied about exposure to fallout during nuclear testing in the Pacific, after lying about fallout exposure during nuclear testing in Nevada and New Mexico during the 50's, 60's, and 70's.
Russian government lied about Chernobyl, lied about exposure, lied to the men who capped Chernobyl, lied to the mothers delivering severely defective children, lies to this day about Chernobyl, but cannot lie about the dead zone of hundreds of square miles around Chernobyl uninhabitable for decades to come.
And, you, the uninformed, uneducated, and ignorant, play right into their hands, plugging your ears with your fingers. All the while singing " It never happened, la la la " at the top of your fucking lungs.
Congratulfuckinglations, oh great lap dog for the liars of the world.
Reminds me of the "experts" that went on CNN after the BP Horizon fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Experts" told us how their computer models foretold the oil rounding Florida and covering (yes, covering...) the entire East coast within days.
Unfortunately, the currents showed the oil slick moving west-north-west into the mangrove fields of Louisianna. It never reached Florida at all, never mind the east coast.
I am all for the tin foil hat hysteria of ZeroHedge, but there comes a point when even conspiracy theorists should yell bullshit.
Just that they couldn't see a 'slick' but the plumes of sub-surface oil did find their way south and if they are continuing to move with the currents, will eventually ring Florida. To this day I've never eaten another bite of Gulf seafood after they used the 'sniff' test to determine it was 'safe'.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/water/oil-from-bp-spill-was-pus...
You can find plenty of scientific evidence for the huge plumes of oil sitting on the floor or in deep water in the Gulf, mostly written about in 2010 and then forgotten.
Almost 10 years after an oil spill in Tampa Bay, a strong storm brought up submerged oil from that spill, even though it was thought to have been 'cleaned up'.
krispkritter -- Sub-surface oil? You obviously voted for Obama.
Crude oil is less dense than sea water. Since you apparently failed science class, let me put that in terms you might understand:
OIL FLOATS -- ON THE SURFACE!!!
This is why even the Obama cheerleaders on TV stopped trying to promote this sub-surface bull shit. You are just too stupid to be commenting, even on ZH
So USF and a bunch of these other universities and so on are all in on it? They've been doing this research for years and all their findings on this are BS? So all the spill sites where they find oil sitting in silt years afterward are also in some big conspiracy? Have you ever heard of Corexit? So where did all that oil magically go? Your credentials? Other than being a useless ad hominem spewing shill? Do a little reading and research you witless cretin maybe you'll learn something useful. Sorry guys, guess I found the one who forgot his meds...
They haven't been doing ANY research. They keep doing a "literature review" of each other's rants. That is not research.
Research would cost serious money. Use your fucking head (if you have a brain).
This idiot at USF supposedly surveyed an area about 15 times the size of Louisianna (the whole state). Did it by himself (and a couple grad students?), without missing any classes, without a fleet of submersibles, in an environment completely hostile to human life?
Are you kidding me? You actually fall for that? You actually believe this quack did something in a few days that Woods Hole and the US Navy can't do in three months? You are daft!!!
Why do honest searches on land require thousands of police (or park rangers, etc) and take weeks to cover one city... yet this quack surveyed the entire floor of the gulf of mexico, 15K feet below the surface, by himself, with no submersibles, and a couple thousand bucks?
Are you really that stupid?
Hey, Barrack - news flash for ya.
Some pure light crude, and other forms of crude oil will indeed float on water - INITIALLY. Once the lighter volatiles are evaporated off by sun exposure, heat, and wave action, the left over crud sinks. Also known as bitumen, asphalt, or tar.
Go back to that matchbook skool you graduated from, and demand a refund.
Think you are confusing heavy crude (which contains the contaminents you called "crud") -- versus the light crude that is found in the GOM.
Nice try though -- you almost made it sound like you had thought the problem through before commenting. Keep trying!!
Not when you mix it with dispersants. BP had a tube in the wellbore, you could see it in some of the underwater footage during the 90 days or so of the wild well. The tube was injecting thousands of gallons of dispersant every day. So the 'oilcano' never showed on the surface, at least not to the extent you'd expect for such a large spill.
So there's that, and the fact that much of what comes from an oil well is better described as 'tar'. Tar is frequently heavier than water. When scientists went looking for the oil after the well was capped, they found huge quantities of tar on the bottom ... it was an oil/mud/water/dispersant emulsion, and significantly nastier than if BP had simply left out the dispersants. Microscopic droplets of oil/dispersant also found their way into much of the sea life in the Gulf. Again, it would have been better if BP had simply allowed the oil to float. Would have made a mess of beaches all around the Gulf, but it would be clearing itself by now -- sun, sea, and microbes work better than chemicals.
And you are an ignorant turd that floats on the surface.
If BP could stick a tube in the wellbore (which is bullshit that you made up), they would have used it to seal up the wellbore. Only you and your tin-foil hat wearing friends could see this imaginary tube. To the rest of the world, BP had lost control of the well, which is why it was a shit storm in the first place.
Scientists did not go looking around for tar balls near the well head after it was capped. Too deep for any humans. And that dipshit U of Miami asshole who imagined oil flopping around Florida doesn't own a rubber ducky, much less a submersible capable of making one dive.
While Woods Hole Oceanographic institute does have a submersible and did send it down (on contract from the Coast Guard) -- it was only able to stay a few minutes and only examine the well head itself. Exploring thousands of square miles of gulf floor would have taken years, cost billions, and require more submersibles than exist.
You have to stop making up stupid bullshit. All your conspiracy theories do is discredit anyone who criticizes BP. Everyone gets looped in with you nut cases, and ignored. I would almost accuse you of working for BP to discredit everyone else -- except you seem to be helping them for free.
I was in grammar school in the Fifties. Over one hundred nuclear bombs were detonated above ground, and the radiation, lots of it, drifted eastward. The fallout settled on the grass and the cows ate the grass. strontium 90 was in ALL the milk, even mother's milk. We made radiation detectors in school from baby food jars and tin foil. Nobody was panicking. Now people put the tinfoil on their head. Asbestos and lead paint were not outlawed until I was almost 30 years old. We are proceeding to be healthier than our parents and we are living longer.
A thousand things will kill you before any inaginery radiation from an unknown source.
I hear all this shrill hysteria and all I can think is :
What a bunch of nutless wimps todays whiners are.
moron - the level of cesium measured is now 11 at that spot in the ocean - the base BEFORE fukushima from nuclear testing etc was 3 to 3.2 - so this testing of 11 shows a more than 300% increase -
no big DEAL!
plutonium 138 has a 28,000 year half life -in 7 half lifes it will be decayed fully - 210,000 years
tritium has a 12 year half life -
the cesium they actually test for has a very short 2 year half life -
and cesium is a bi-product of other isotopes decaying -
so when they say there is cesium it may very well be the result of other NOT TESTED FOR isotopes.....
of which there are more than 120 being released DAILY in the form of 400,000 tons of highly radioactive water flowing into the Pacific Ocean -
INDUSTRIAL FRANKENSTEIN where the fix hasn't even been invented to clean up this mess =
meanwhile I can't rebuilt my garage cause it's too close to a small creek -
The same cubic meter of seawater that has 11 Bq of Cs-134/137 in it, has 12,090 Bq of K-40. ...your point?
I was going to give you an up arrow for correctly quoting the source, but there was no way to undo the up arrow without making it a down arrow. Sorry.
No wonder we are all dying of cancer.
Sadly it took over 30 years to get the scientific facts out about that. Death toll officially estimated at 10,000-75,000 Americans--how many 9/11 attacks is that?
Fukushima easily equals not only that, but all atmospheric nuclear testing combined in terms of longer term isotope release. Equally sad.
Have you seen anyone panicking? As in running with their arms waving around? Or is that just a trivialization of other people?
This isn't a joke and your own hysteria won't help. Health and biology experts get to say what radioactive decay does to living tissue. Not 'nuclear physicists' with no relevant skills.
"10,000-75,000 Americans "
we have lost more Americans to the cholesterol in cheese
I chose to eat the cheese.
"I was in grammar school in the Fifties. Over one hundred nuclear bombs were detonated above ground, and the radiation, lots of it, drifted eastward. The fallout settled on the grass and the cows ate the grass. strontium 90 was in ALL the milk, even mother's milk. We made radiation detectors in school from baby food jars and tin foil. Nobody was panicking."
"We" didn't panic, because "we" were ignorant.
Did you notice that open air nuke testing got banned? Wonder why?
There will never be a study in out lifetimes concerning the increase in cancer suffering and death due to open air testing.
Did you notice that open air nuke testing got banned? Wonder why?
At the risk of a "no shit", no shit?
Standard Disclaimer: Thank you, master of the obvious.
Only in hindsight was it obvious.
Go to the NY Times archive and find the story that says "Open Air Testing = Cancer".
It wasn't there any time in the 1960s, if ever.
there was quite a significant increase in cancers following nuclear bomb tests.
for instance John wayne:
See also: Downwinders—Health effects of nuclear testingThe exterior scenes were shot on location near St. George, Utah, 137 miles (220 km) downwind of the United States government's Nevada National Security Site. In 1953, extensive above-ground nuclear weapons testing (11 total) occurred at the test site as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole. The cast and crew spent many difficult weeks on location, and in addition Hughes later shipped 60 tons of dirt back to Hollywood in order to match the Utah terrain and lend verisimilitude to studio re-shoots.[6] The filmmakers knew about the nuclear tests[6] but the federal government reassured residents that the tests caused no hazard to public health.[13]
Director Dick Powell died of cancer in January 1963, seven years after the film's release. Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1960, and committed suicide in June 1963 after he learned his condition had become terminal. Hayward, Wayne, and Moorehead all died of cancer in the 1970s. Cast member actor John Hoyt died of lung cancer in 1991. Skeptics point to other factors such as the wide use of tobacco — Wayne and Moorehead in particular were heavy smokers, and Wayne himself believed his lung cancer to have been a result of his six-packs-a-day cigarette habit.[14] The cast and crew totaled 220 people. By the end of 1980, as ascertained by People magazine, 91 of them had developed some form of cancer and 46 had died of the disease. Several of Wayne and Hayward's relatives also had cancer scares after visiting the set. Michael Wayne developed skin cancer, his brother Patrick had a benign tumor removed from his breast and Hayward's son
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_%28film%29#Cancer_controversy
Outside of a few hot spots, we will outlive our parents. And most of us will die from something else than cancer.
what govermrnt agency do you wory for fucktard?
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken
There is a lot of truth in your comment, but a nuclear bomb carries say 20 kg of U235, a nuclear reactor contains hundereds of tonnes of the stuff plus generates a whole array of long-lived radioactive isotopes while working. All the above-ground nuclear experiments do not generate as much fallout as 1 nuclear power plant blowing up ( Tchernobyl ) or keep leaking for many years ( Fukushima ).
You do of course have a link to prove your statement, I'll wait. (Because my bullshit detector just pegged...)
Enrichment levels ring a bell? Or are you one of those idiots that still believe a nuclear plant can go off like a nuclear weapon?
Not me, dip shit.
But, in the events leading to a criticality, hydrogen gas is generated by fuel rods overheating, which does lead to explosions which breach containment. The reactor is not the first problem, though.
Spent fuel rod pools full of enough spent fuel to reload the reactors hundreds of times over that were slowly filled up over the decades the plant has been in operation are the problem.
Still radioactive, still need cooling. Build them several stories up from ground level, then have them crack and leak during say, and earthquake or tsunami, and once the fuel rods are exposed, they burn. Low level thermonuclear reaction. That happened.
Now, pouring water on the mess left over is the only solution the rocket scientists have come up with since. Several hundred tons per day. On to the spent rod pools, the reactor left overs, where it leaks into the water table, and / or flows directly into the Pacific Ocean.
Every fucking day since 2011.
If you put 1% of the energy devoted to your posts here into educating yourself, you would be a richer human being for your efforts.
Until then, you are a sad pathetic little creature, serving your masters knowingly, or unknowingly.
The problem with Fuckushima is not that is has leaked radiation. The problem not even so much that it is still leaking radiation.
The problem is that it continues to leak radiation at ever increasing rates - and with no foreseeable end.
It is sincerely fascinating that certain topics immediately draw the trolls. Fuku radiation seems to be one of them!
Be sure to send out an e-mail as to when the great die-off begins... Wouldn't want to miss it.
Standard Disclaimer: Popcorn, I really need to stock up on more popcorn.
It is already here.
Your intellectual capacity has taken a big hit already.
You can blame it on Fukushima,, Chernobyl, Hanford, Pacific bomb tests, Nevada bomb tests, et-fucking cetera
With that said, of course, we should note that the highest level of Cs-137 measured by Dr. Buesseler in bulk seawater was 11 Bq/m3, which is somewhere down in the noise of natural radioactivity, from K-40 for example. Granted, some of the seafood critters will accumulate and concentrate that stuff to some degree. Cause for concern, but not panic.
So, don't drink Pacific seawater. Not because of the Cesium, but because it is too salty.
Thanks for keeping some attention focused on this issue, GW.
I seem to recall reading a blurb the other day that fresh, short-lived fission products had been found in the Pacific, attributable to Fukushima. In other words, 4½ years later and counting, they still have uncontrolled criticality in the slag heaps from one or more reactor cores / SFPs.
The stupidity and incompetence of the Japanese in this mess is extraordinary. But the complicity of the worldwide 'nuclear village' is infuriating. They are still trying to sell NPPs as a 'green' form of alternative energy.
The Russians made some effort to put out the nuclear fire at Chernobyl. It will be a deadly mess for centuries, for millenia, but at least it isn't still fissioning.
Must not talk about Fuku. West Coast RE could suffer for instance.
Check this out George, just another day in ST. George Utah.
Another version from Toxipedia.org
Thanks for the links. Here's another: http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO3.html
Those texts shows the long time-liine from occurence and exposures to actual damage and suffering. History repeats.