Thread: Fukushima radiation could reach Pacific coast by April

Fukushima radiation could reach Pacific coast by April

David Perlman
Updated 12:09 pm, Tuesday, February 25, 2014

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  Dr. Roger Gilbert collects seawater near Fort Bragg in an effort to monitor for radiation contamination. Photo: Roger Gilbert

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• Coast getting little radiation from Fukushima disaster

Radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster has not yet reached ocean waters along the Pacific coast, but low levels of radioactive cesium from the stricken Japanese power plant could arrive by April, scientists reported Monday.

The report came even as some Internet sites continue claiming that dangerously radioactive ocean water from Fukushima is showing up along California beaches - reports that have been denied by health officials and scientists since they first surfaced more than a month ago.

Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Mass., reported that four coastal monitoring sites in California and Washington have detected no traces of radiation from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant destruction - "not yet," he said during a telephone press briefing.

The briefing took place in Honolulu during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union's Ocean Sciences section. The meeting is being held with scientists from both sides of the Pacific to discuss problems caused anywhere in the Pacific by the offshore earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 16, 2011.

Buesseler said no federal or international agencies are monitoring ocean waters from Fukushima on this side of the Pacific, so he has organized volunteer monitors at 16 sites along the California and Washington coasts and two in Hawaii to collect seawater in 20-liter specialized plastic containers and ship them by UPS to his Woods Hole laboratory.

Two specific radioactive isotopes of the element cesium are formed in nuclear accidents, he explained.

One is cesium-137, whose radioactivity decays very slowly - its half-life is 30 years - while the other is cesium-134, which decays rapidly with a two-year half-life. So while cesium-137 is still detectable in the world's oceans from old nuclear-weapons tests, any traces of cesium-134 that are detected by monitoring instruments could only have come from the Fukushima nuclear accident, Buesseler said.

According to a widely accepted model of the oceans' circulation patterns, traces of the plume of radioactive seawater from Fukushima should be detectable along the Pacific coast in April.

"We need to know the real levels of radiation coming at us," said Bing Dong, a retired accountant and self-described activist at Point Reyes Station who has volunteered to collect ocean samples for Buesseler's project. "There's so much disinformation out there, and we really need actual data."

Roger Gilbert, a physician and radiation oncologist who collected water at Fort Bragg along the Mendocino County coast, said he got involved in Buesseler's monitoring project because he is concerned "over fear-mongering on the Internet about allegedly high levels of Fukushima radiation in California's coastal waters."

http://www.sfgate.com/science/articl...by-5264277.php

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Ocean kelp tested for Japan nuclear radiation

Posted: Feb 25, 2014 4:00 PM PSTUpdated: Feb 25, 2014 4:05 PM PSTBy Marcella Lee, Anchor/Reporter - bio | email

(CBS 8 ) - It's been three years since the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster in Japan. This April, radiation from Japan is expected to arrive in the ocean waters off San Diego.

A YouTube video featuring a man with a Geiger Counter claiming to measure radiation off the coast of San Francisco from the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster has received more than 750,000 hits.

But experts say what he's really measuring is naturally occurring radiation in the sand.

Still, there are legitimate concerns about radiation arriving on the west coast from the March 2011 Fukushima Disaster in Japan.

The levels in San Diego, however, will be much, much lower.

"The area right around where the disaster occurred, there's a much bigger problem there and much more easily identifiable," explained San Diego State Biology Professor Matthew Edwards.

Edwards is one of 40 scientists along the west coast who, starting next month, will start taking kelp forest samples from Baja to Alaska.

"From a biological standpoint, giant kelp is the barrier along the coast.

Anything approaching the coast has to go through the kelp forest to get to our coast," continued Edwards.

Professor Edwards says the kelp filters and concentrates a radioactive isotope from the Japan disaster called cesium that they can test for.

"Kelp uptakes things from the environment into its tissues. It will uptake metals and chemicals and it will uptake cesium," said Edwards.

For the next 12 months, scientists will collect the kelp offshore, dry it out and grind it down into power. It will then be sent to UC Berkeley to be tested in a lab for radiation.

Scientists do not expect to find levels that are a risk to humans.

"Personally, I don't think we are going to see things of a dangerous level. I don't know that, but that's is the belief going in. But it's likely we will be able to detect it," Edwards added.

The kelp tests should show average levels of radiation in the ocean and give an indication when levels are rising and falling - a much more scientific method than a hand-held Geiger Counter.

"My hope would be that these levels are going to be so low that they're not of concern. I'm just like everybody else. The ocean, to me, is something that I not only study, but I use," Edwards noted.

The kelp study is being led by Cal State Long Beach Biology Professor Steven Manley. Scientists will begin collecting the first samples up and down the coast this week.

http://www.cbs8.com/story/24822193/o...lear-radiation