Fukushima: Over 100 New Radioactive Contamination Sites Found Off North America’s West Coast
By Star Fox
New research has found that radiation from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan has reached more sites off North
America’s west cost with the highest levels of radiation detected to
date.
From the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution:
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. 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.
Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist with the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and director of the WHOI Center for
Marine and Environmental Radioactivity, was among the first to begin
monitoring radiation in the Pacific, organizing a research expedition to
the Northwest Pacific near Japan just three months after the accident
that started in March 2011. Through a citizen science sampling effort, Our Radioactive Ocean,
that he 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.
