Thread: Fukushima Radiation Scare Stories Are Going Viral. Are They Real Or FAKE?

Andrew David Thaler
Deep-sea biologist, population/conservation geneticist, backyard farm advocate. The deep sea is Earth's last great wilderness.

28 fallacies about the Fukushima nuclear disaster’s effect on the US West Coast

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is back in the news, with recent reports of continued leaks. Coming on the heels of these new reports is a viral blog post entitled 28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima. The article is a paranoid, poorly reasoned attempt to link the tragedy of the Fukushima disaster to just about every environmental issue facing the US west coast in the last few months. At its best, it’s an illogical piece of post-modern absurdism. At its worst, its empirically false and intentionally misleading, rife with out-of-context quotes and cherry-picked data. The author had 28 chances to make a single reasonable point, and every single one rang hollow.
Of course it went viral.

Since I believe in open, honest discourse, let me begin by pointing out that I am not a physicist, nor do I have any particular credentials when it comes to nuclear energy. I am a marine ecologist. You’ll find, however, that for these 28 points, the devil is not in the details.

Most are the result of logical fallacies, rather than technical inaccuracies. Many are simply articles taken out of context or unbelievably tenuous observations followed by “couldn’t it be Fukushima?” In a follow up, the author even argues that he’s “Just asking questions” a phrase I thought was long ago relegated to Glenn Beck parodies. A fifth of these points don’t even have to do with the North American West Coast.

So here we go, with a point by point debunking of this unfortunate article. I’ve broken them out into larger themes which I hope will make the many logical fallacies apparent. For reasons that will become obvious, we begin with point 20.

An article arguing that the West Coast is being “absolutely fried” by radiation also argues that the radiation won’t reach us until 2014.
“20. One recent study concluded that a very large plume of cesium-137 from the Fukushima disaster will start flowing into U.S. coastal waters early next year…
Ocean simulations showed that the plume of radioactive cesium-137 released by the Fukushima disaster in 2011 could begin flowing into U.S. coastal waters starting in early 2014 and peak in 2016.”

The title of this article is “28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima”, but buried deep in the text is point 20 — the radioactive plume won’t reach the West Coast of the United States until 2014. Are you familiar with the old robot folk-saying “Does not compute”? Keep this point in mind while reading through the rest of these points. Interestingly, the whole paragraph that the 2014 line was cherry picked from reads:

“Ocean simulations showed that the plume of radioactive cesium-137 released by the Fukushima disaster in 2011 could begin flowing into U.S. coastal waters starting in early 2014 and peak in 2016. Luckily, two ocean currents off the eastern coast of Japan — the Kuroshio Current and the Kuroshio Extension — would have diluted the radioactive material so that its concentration fell well below the World Health Organization’s safety levels within four months of the Fukushima incident. But it could have been a different story if nuclear disaster struck on the other side of Japan.”
source

Points with no connection to Fukushima
These are real issues affecting the ocean but there is no evidence that any of them are connected to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Remember, the original article itself even noted that the first radioactive ocean plumes wouldn’t reach the Pacific coast of North America until 2014.
1. Polar bears, seals and walruses along the Alaska coastline are suffering from fur loss and open sores…
From the actual article cited:

“Reuters noted that preliminary studies do not support a theory that the disease is due to contamination from the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.”
source

2. There is an epidemic of sea lion deaths along the California coastline…
This is true, and those dead sea lions were killed by starvation. One theory is that a decline in food fish populations has made it harder for mothers to nurse newborn pups.
From one of the sources:

“Sarah Wilkin is a marine biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service. Asked why it has reached this point, she said: “We’re looking at whether the prey that these animals should be eating just isn’t available to them for some reason, and that could be because there’s less of it or because it’s moved and it’s not accessible.””
source

3. Along the Pacific coast of Canada and the Alaska coastline, the population of sockeye salmon is at a historic low. Many are blaming Fukushima.
There is no mention in the source article of anyone blaming Fukushima. Salmon populations have been struggling for decades. What the article does say is:

“Conservation groups have sounded the alarm, saying Alaskan commercial fishermen are contributing to the problem as Skeena River sockeye get caught in the nets of Americans fishing for pink and chum sockeye.”
source

4. Something is causing fish all along the west coast of Canada to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.
The suspected cause is viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a disease known from other Pacific fish species. Again, no mention in the source of anything to do with Fukushima.

Points that are misleading or deliberately distort facts
5. A vast field of radioactive debris from Fukushima that is approximately the size of California has crossed the Pacific Ocean and is starting to collide with the west coast.
The 2011 earthquake and tsunami was an unprecedented natural disaster. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was an unprecedented human disaster. They are related, but they are not the same thing. There was a large amount of debris washed into the Pacific by the tsunami. A very small component of that debris may have come from Fukushima. There is not a California-sized island of radioactive debris making its way across the Pacific.
6. It is being projected that the radioactivity of coastal waters off the U.S. west coast could double over the next five to six years.
Technically true, egregiously misleading. From the source:

Tentatively assuming a value of 10 petabecquerel (PBq) for the net 137Caesium (Cs) input during the first weeks after the Fukushima incident, the simulation suggests a rapid dilution of peak radioactivity values to about 10 Bq/m³ during the first 2 years, followed by a gradual decline to 1–2 Bq/m³ over the next 4–7 years. The total peak radioactivity levels would then be about twice the pre-Fukushima values. “While this may sound alarming, these levels are still lower than those permitted for drinking water,” said Böning.
source

7. Experts have found very high levels of cesium-137 in plankton living in the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast.
True, but again, misleading. Cesium-137 doesn’t biomagnify like mercury. Cesium has a biological half-life of 70 days. Claiming that cesium-137 will travel up the “food chain” like mercury and other heavy metals do is simply wrong.
8. One test in California found that 15 out of 15 bluefin tuna were contaminated with radiation from Fukushima.
Again, the article ignores the fact that they found low-levels of cesium. From the source:

Low levels of radioactive cesium from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident turned up in fish caught off California in 2011, researchers reported Monday.
The bluefin spawn off Japan, and many migrate across the Pacific Ocean. Tissue samples taken from 15 bluefin caught in August, five months after the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, all contained reactor byproducts cesium-134 and cesium-137 at levels that produced radiation about 3% higher than natural background sources
source

9. Back in 2012, the Vancouver Sun reported that cesium-137 was being found in a very high percentage of the fish that Japan was selling to Canada…
There are important health issues associate with seafood caught near the power plant. Because of that, Japan has since suspended fishing activities near Fukushima and established an exclusion zone.
10. Canadian authorities are finding extremely high levels of nuclear radiation in certain fish samples…
The source for this is talking about fish from Japan, not Canada, although the author makes it sound like he’s talking about fish caught in Canada. Points 9 and 10 are actually the same point.
11. Some experts believe that we could see very high levels of cancer along the west coast just from people eating contaminated fish…
The science says otherwise:

The additional dose from Fukushima radionuclides to humans consuming tainted PBFT in the United States was calculated to be 0.9 and 4.7 μSv for average consumers and subsistence fishermen, respectively. Such doses are comparable to, or less than, the dose all humans routinely obtain from naturally occurring radionuclides in many food items, medical treatments, air travel, or other background sources. Although uncertainties remain regarding the assessment of cancer risk at low doses of ionizing radiation to humans, the dose received from PBFT consumption by subsistence fishermen can be estimated to result in two additional fatal cancer cases per 10,000,000 similarly exposed people.
source

Points that lacks sufficient context to be informative
13. An EU-funded study concluded that Fukushima released up to 210 quadrillion becquerels of cesium-137 into the atmosphere.
Ok, but how much is that? Is that a lot? Is that a dangerous amount? The total radiation from Fukushima is currently estimated to be about 5.5% of that released by Chernobyl.
14. Atmospheric radiation from Fukushima reached the west coast of the United States within a few days back in 2011.
When we measured that radiation in 2011, it was found to be too low to have any effect.
15. At this point, 300 tons of contaminated water is pouring into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima every single day.
The mass of water in an olympic swimming pool is 2500 tons. At this rate, it would take more than 8 days for that contaminated water to fill an olympic swimming pool. The Pacific ocean is significantly larger.
16. A senior researcher of marine chemistry at the Japan Meteorological Agency’s Meteorological Research Institute says that “30 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium and 30 billion becquerels of radioactive strontium” are being released into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima every single day.
Again, the article gives us no indication of whether those numbers are meaningful? Is that a lot?
17. According to Tepco, a total of somewhere between 20 trillion and 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium have gotten into the Pacific Ocean since the Fukushima disaster first began.
What does that mean? Where is the context. Just throwing out big numbers without providing any sort of explanation is nothing but scaremongering.
19. It has been estimated that up to 100 times as much nuclear radiation has been released into the ocean from Fukushima than was released during the entire Chernobyl disaster.
Fukushima is on the coast. Chernobyl was in the middle of the Ukraine. Of course there was more radiation released into the ocean by Fukushima. That doesn’t change the fact that the total radiation released by Fukushima is about 5.5% of that released by the Chernobyl disaster.
24. The Iodine-131, Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 that are constantly coming from Fukushima are going to affect the health of those living the the northern hemisphere for a very, very long time. Just consider what Harvey Wasserman had to say about this…
There are no scientific studies cited by this source. Harvey Wasserman is an anti-nuclear activist. There’s nothing inherently problematic about that, and I’m sure he’s got some interesting ideas to discuss, but I need to see the data backing up these (very vague) claims and the data is not provided.

Points that have nothing to do with the premise of the article, AKA non-sequitors
These next 6 points have plenty of issues, but the most pressing of which is that they have nothing to do with the US West Coast or how it is currently being fried by radiation from Fukushima. As they are non-sequitors, they do not warrant further analysis here.
12. BBC News recently reported that radiation levels around Fukushima are “18 times higher” than previously believed.
18. According to a professor at Tokyo University, 3 gigabecquerels of cesium-137 are flowing into the port at Fukushima Daiichi every single day.
21. It is being projected that significant levels of cesium-137 will reach every corner of the Pacific Ocean by the year 2020.
26. A study conducted last year came to the conclusion that radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster could negatively affect human life along the west coast of North America from Mexico to Alaska “for decades”.
27. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is being projected that the cleanup of Fukushima could take up to 40 years to complete.
28. Yale Professor Charles Perrow is warning that if the cleanup of Fukushima is not handled with 100% precision that humanity could be threatened “for thousands of years”…

Points that are just, plain wrong
22. It is being projected that the entire Pacific Ocean will soon “have cesium levels 5 to 10 times higher” than what we witnessed during the era of heavy atomic bomb testing in the Pacific many decades ago.
It is not easy to find direct comparisons between nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, which makes me think this factoid was invented whole cloth. The closest I can find are comparisons in ‘units-Hiroshima’. In the Pacific, Castle Bravo alone had a 1000 times greater yield than Hiroshima. And Castle Bravo was only one of over 100 high yield nuclear weapons tests conducted by the United States. An additional 193 test were conducted by France in Polynesia. The most liberal sources I can find, place Fukushima at somewhere around 4000 Hiroshimas. That’s high, but it’s nowhere near the claim of 5 to 10 times higher than the Pacific nuclear weapons testing era.
23. The immense amounts of nuclear radiation getting into the water in the Pacific Ocean has caused environmental activist Joe Martino to issue the following warning: “Your days of eating Pacific Ocean fish are over.”
Actually, Gary Stamper said that. And Gary Stamper’s claims were completely debunked.
25. According to a recent Planet Infowars report, the California coastline is being transformed into “a dead zone”…
No. Just no. Planet InfoWars? No.
I have been to the California Coast, recently. It does not look anything like this bizarre article describes.

Conclusion
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was an unparalleled environmental catastrophe and we will be seeing fallout from it for years to come. I honestly cannot think of any reason to fabricate a bunch of paranoid talking points to make it seem worse.

Thousands of people were displaced from their home, many of them permanently. Contaminated waste was,and still is, being dumped into the water surround the plant. The energy infrastructure of an entire nation was compromised. Do we really need to blame Fukushima on a viral outbreak in British Columbia, too?

To put things in perspective, the Fukushima disaster released approximately one ten-thousandth of the total radiation produce by the world’s coal power plants annually. That number will either be reassuring or terrifying, but, really, it should be both.

There is another reason why articles like this are so compelling, particularly to those in rich, developed countries. It gives us the ability to blame the “foreign other” for our own environmental crises. It’s not our fault that salmon stocks are collapsing, it’s the Japanese! We aren’t the ones driving polar bears and marine mammal moralities, Fukushima did it! The West Coast of the United States is being fried. It’s being fried by over-fishing, agricultural run-off, runaway development, and a host of other issues, but it’s not being fried by Fukushima, and articles that promote that fallacious argument are distracting us from the dominant causes of environmental degradation on our coasts: Us.

Broadcast!
October 29, 2013 • 3:40 pm


Andrew David Thaler
Deep-sea biologist, population/conservation geneticist, backyard farm advocate. The deep sea is Earth's last great wilderness.

http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=15903

Fukushima Radiation Scare Hoaxes

17,9171430 Updated 9 days ago

Fukushima Radiation Scare Hoaxes refers fictitious reports about dangerous radiation from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Origin

As early as August 2013, an email message began circulating claiming that radioactive seepage had spread across the Pacific Ocean from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant, accompanied by an image illustrating the trajectory of the radiation (shown below). On August 28th, a page titled “Fukushima Emergency” was created on the hoax debunking site Snopes,^[3] which revealed that the image was actually a map of projected tsunami wave heights and not radiation spread.


Spread

On September 3rd, 2013, the satirical news site National Report published an article reporting that Fukushima radiation had killed hundreds of whales, which contained an embedded image of beached whales (shown below). On September 5th, an entry titled “Fukushima Dead Whales Hoax” was submitted to the Hoax debunking website Hoax Slayer,^[10] which revealed that the photo was of pilot whales beached on the coast of New Zealand in August of 2010, several months prior to the Fukushima meltdown.


On October 22nd, 2013, the government conspiracy news blog Activist Post^[7] published an article attributing various environmental issues on the United States west coast to the Fukushima disaster. On October 29th, the science blog Southern Fried Science^[9] published an article debunking many of the points made in the Activist Post piece. On October 28th, the skeptic news blog Skeptoid^[2] published an article about Fukushima radiation rumors, referring to the reports as “scaremongering.” On November 28th, the ocean life blog Deep Sea News^[5] published an article debunking several radiation rumors which exposed the radiation spread image to be a map of estimated maximum wave heights. On December 24th, 2013, YouTuber Kill0Your0TV uploaded a video featuring a man using a Geiger Counter at Pacifica State Beach near San Francisco, California, claiming that the Fukushima radiation had hit the United States’ coast (shown below). In the next two weeks, the video gained more than 560,000 views and 1,000 comments.
On January 6th, 2014, the conspiracy theory blog Infowars ^[4] highlighted the video in an article questioning if Fukushima radiation had hit the California coastline. On the following day, the news blog PolicyMic^[8] published an article about viral Fukushima radiation stories spreading online, criticizing those who have attributing environmental issues to the Fukushima disaster without evidence.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fukush...n-scare-hoaxes

1. snopes.com: Fukushima Emergency
   
   www.snopes.com › Home › Fauxtography › Technology
   
   Jan 5, 2014 - and "Persons residing on the west coast of North America should ... Since the end of 2013, a hoax has been going around on the Internet ...

1. Fukushima Radiation Scare Hoaxes | Know Your Meme
   
   knowyourmeme.com/memes/fukushima-radiation-scare-hoaxes‎
   
   Jan 7, 2014 - About Fukushima Radiation Scare Hoaxes refers fictitious reports about dangerous radiation from the 2011Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

. . . Tepco doubled pay for contract workers at the plant to around $200 a day last year after criticism over its handling of their pay.

Previously a Reuters investigation had found that the pay of some workers was being skimmed off by sub-contractors, some had been hired under false pretences, and some contractors had links to organized crime gangs.

Hirose said Tepco does not permit workers' pay to be skimmed by the various companies in the chain of contractors operating at Fukushima, but admitted that verifying whether laborers' wages had actually been docked or not was complex.

"We did not increase (wages) to give out more money to those (firms) in the middle. Raising wages from 10,000 yen ($100) to 20,000 yen was difficult for us ... of course we want the money to reach the correct place," he said.
($1=104.27 Japanese yen)
(Editing by Greg Mahlich)

http://news.yahoo.com/fukushima-39-o...--finance.html

New Fukushima Radiation Study Will Focus on West Coast Kelp Forests

Molly Samuel, KQED Science | January 15, 2014

A kelp forest near Catalina Island. (Thomas Farrugia)

Researchers are launching a new project to monitor California’s kelp forests for radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.

For Kelp Watch 2014, as it’s called, scientists will fan out this year along the California coast, to collect kelp and find out if it has absorbed any radiation from the 2011 meltdown.

“I’ve gotten calls from people who are coming here to surf, people who live along the coastline, asking me, ‘Is it safe to go in the water?’” said Steven Manley, a biology professor at California State University, Long Beach who created Kelp Watch 2014. His plan is to measure radiation levels in kelp three times in multiple locations between the Oregon border and Baja California from mid February through next winter and make the results public.

‘It’s sort of like having a large Geiger counter stretching the entire coastline.’

“Part of the reason for doing this is because the public is very freaked out by all this talk of radioactivity,” he said. “If they can actually see the numbers and a commentary as to what they mean, hopefully that’ll put them at ease.”

Kelp forests, he said, are a good indicator. For one, they’re all over the place. “You can find them along the entire California coastline from San Diego all the way up to Del Norte County,” Manley said. Plus, kelp acts sort of like a sponge, taking in whatever is in the seawater on the surface of the ocean. “It’s sort of like having a large Geiger counter stretching the entire coastline,” he said.

Manley did an earlier study of Fukushima radiation and kelp. A month after the accident, he found radioactive iodine in kelp on the West Coast. The iodine had traveled from the nuclear power plant through the atmosphere, and has a very short half-life. So it got here quickly and disappeared quickly. Within a few months, he said, it was gone. The radioactiviy posed no health risk to humans, he said at the time, and had no effects on the giant kelp, or on fish or other marine life.

Now attention is directed to the radiation traveling in ocean currents, which are much slower than the jet stream. Scientists think that could begin hitting California shores in the next couple years. By measuring radiation in kelp forests up and down the coast, Manley said he hopes to find out if and when it enters the kelp forest ecosystem.

“If it gets into the kelp, certain fish feed directly on the kelp. Other fish feed indirectly by eating other organisms. The fish are going to have some in them,” he said. “Now, is it enough to worry about?

Probably not. But people have the right to know what’s there.”

Manley and volunteers from 19 institutions (this is, at this point, a project composed completely of researchers working pro bono) will send their kelp samples to Kai Vetter, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and head of the Applied Nuclear Physics program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Vetter has been measuring signals from Fukushima here in California since the accident.

‘The concentration of radioactive materials which will be washed ashore here has no impact whatsoever on our daily life.’

While sampling rainwater in 2011 and 2012, Vetter and his colleagues found extremely low levels of radioactivity from Fukushima. A week after the accident, for example, they reported that a person would have to drink 632 liters of Berkeley rainwater – 166 gallons – to be exposed to the same level of radiation as a passenger experiences during a round-trip flight between San Francisco and Washington D.C.

Once radiation from Fukushima does arrive on the West Coast from the ocean, Vetter said, he expects it will be in miniscule amounts.

“The concentration of radioactive materials which will be washed ashore here has no impact whatsoever on our daily life,” he said. “The levels we are measuring, they will not be harmful. They will not have any measurable health impact on humans or any detrimental effects in marine biology.”

Despite several recent online videos and blog posts claiming that Fukushima radiation is causing widespread contamination of the West Coast and harming fish, scientists say their research so far shows that is not the case.

Researchers from Stony Brook University in New York and Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station tested Pacific Bluefin tuna after the 2011 Fukushima incident. They have published research showing radiation levels were low – less than what people are exposed to by eating a banana or other potassium-rich foods that contain naturally occurring radioactive isotopes — and have been falling ever since.

The California Department of Public Health earlier this week, released a statement responding to radiation concerns, saying “Information from Federal agencies, State programs, as well as the Department’s own sampling results, conclude there are no health and safety concerns to California residents.”

http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2014/0...-kelp-forests/

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Fake “Fukushima” Squid Photo Actually a Doctored Beached Whale Image

Posted on January 9, 2014 by waffles in Hoaxes & Rumors // 3 Comments
An image circulating shows a massive squid that allegedly washed ashore in California. The creature is said to have attained its size due to radiation from the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Is the photo real or fake?

It’s fake.
Let’s first take a look at what is being circulated. A recent tweet included the image stated:
Giant Squid Found In California Scientists Suspect #Fukushima caused


The original photo, however, does not include the image of a giant squid, but that of a normal-sized whale which washed up on a beach in Chile in 2011. In an article entitled “Whale found dead in Chile,” 4thmedia.org (citing China Daily) in a report of the beached whale at the gulf of Arauco, in November 201. The original image was included in the story.


See more photos at 4thmedia.org.

Bottom Line
A giant squid related to Fukushima did not wash ashore in California. The photo is fake, and originated from a beached whale photo snapped in 2011.

http://wafflesatnoon.com/2014/01/09/...kushima-squid/

5th pilot whale found dead off Florida coast

By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ, Associated Press | January 21, 2014 | Updated: January 21, 2014 11:48am

http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/5th-pilot-whale-found-dead-off-Florida-coast-5162349.php

How long will it be before someone blames this on radiation from Japan?

By SETH DOANE CBS NEWS January 27, 2014, 7: 07 PM

Fukushima cleanup could drag on for decades

• play video
• Inside Fukushima: Radiation cleanup could take dec...
  
  

OKUMA, Japan -- A CBS News crew got a rare look inside the damagedFukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Nearly three years after the earthquake and tsunami, the plant is still emitting radiation, and likely will be for years.

Three miles from the plant, roads are still closed. Radiation levels here soar 100 times higher than normal.To protect themselves from radiation, a CBS News crew suited up like the 4,300 decontamination workers here.

Once, this was the heart of a radioactive "no-go zone."

Now it's safe enough to spend a few hours inside.

TEPCO, the company that owns the crippled plant, is still struggling to deal with the disaster. All four reactors are still emitting radiation. But TEPCO has made some progress.

This is what TEPCO wants the world to see: the heart of the decommissioning work taking place in Reactor 4.

Following the earthquake and tsunami in 2011, a hydrogen explosion tore off the roof of this reactor.

At the time, Reactor 4 was not in use, but that explosion sent debris and chunks of concrete into a pool where the nuclear fuel was being stored.


The CBS crew was able to watch the delicate and dangerous work of removing some of the 1,500 radioactive fuel rod assemblies being removed from the pool where they were stored.
CBS NEWS

The CBS crew was able to watch the delicate and dangerous work of removing some of the 1,500 radioactive fuel rod assemblies. If the rods break, they could release more radioactive gases.There's an analogy that removing these rods is like removing a cigarette from a crushed pack.

"Take that analogy," TEPCO engineer Masayuki Ono said in Japanese, "and imagine that the cigarette in that box is lit."

Ono said they have removed 15 percent of the fuel from Reactor 4. But it will be far more difficult to retrieve fuel from the other three reactors that melted down. Those are so radioactive that the technology to dismantle them does not exist yet.

TEPCO injects hundreds of tons of water daily into the reactors to keep them cool. But groundwater is pouring into the damaged reactors and has to be pumped out and stored.

They can't build these tanks fast enough -- an additional 400 tons of contaminated water needs to be stored every day. That's as much water as the average American household uses in a year.

At the end of the tour, the CBS crew was checked for radiation exposure. In four hours, correspondent Seth Doane received the equivalent of less than a chest X-ray.

The 24-hour-a-day cleanup operation is just beginning. It could cost upwards of $100 billion and take up to 40 years to complete.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Fukushima cleanup could drag on for decades
A CBS News crew visits the crippled nuclear reactor, where workers are undertaking delicate and dangerous work of removing radioactive fuel rods
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushim...n-for-decades/

No, Radiation from Fukushima has NOT Killed Hundreds of Whales

Outline
Circulating message couched as a news report claims that hundreds of whales have been killed by radiation from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. The report features a photograph showing dead whales on a beach.

© Depositphotos.com/ Tomasz Pacyna

Brief Analysis
The claims in the story are outright lies. There are no credible reports of large numbers of whales dying from Fukushima radiation.

The image used in the articles shows pilot whales stranded on a New Zealand beach in 2010 and has no connection whatsoever with the 2011 Fukushima meltdown. While the potential effects of the Fukushima disaster are of significant concern, spreading lies and misinformation about the issue is counterproductive and irresponsible.

ExampleFukushima Disaster Leaves Hundreds of Whales Radiated to Death

The Scene Near Fukushima Today – Killed by Nuclear Radiation
Reporting from the village of Fukushima I was shocked to find on my arrival that hundreds of whale carcasses were found along the beach early this morning which now extend up and down the shore as far as I can see.
The scene is absolutely devastating especially since no word of this latest crisis has been reported to the Japanese people or to the rest of the world. In fact the Japanese government has remained silent about today’s latest events.
Read full text (http://nationalreport.net/breaking-f...hales-beached/)


Detailed Analysis

According to a report posted to various "alternative" news websites and messages circulating via social media, hundreds of whales have been killed by radiation leaked from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. The stories feature a photograph depicting a number of dead whales on a beach.
The picture supposedly shows the "scene near Fukushima today".

However, the claims in the report are deliberate lies. While there is a great deal of information about the Fukushima disaster and its potential effects on the environment, there are no credible reports at all that support the claim that hundreds of whales have died due to radiation from the plant.

And the image depicting dead whales - which comprises the only evidence of the alleged event presented in the report - has no connection with Fukushima whatsoever.

In fact, the image shows pilot whales stranded on a beach in New Zealand. And the event occurred in August 2010, months before the March 2011 Fukushima meltdown.

Ironically, the websites that publish this and similar reports promise readers "the truth" but in fact peddle outright lies. The author of the report obviously took an image from an unrelated news site and made up a story to go with it just to further his own political worldview or simply to get more website hits. It is both irresponsible and counterproductive to spread lies and misinformation about a disaster of international significance such as Fukushima. Such deliberate lies spread fear and alarm and needlessly muddies the water surrounding the issue.

Recent news reports have certainly raised alarm, with revelations that up to 300 tons of radiation contaminated water has been leaking into the sea near Fukushima every day. The long-term effects of this contamination remain somewhat unclear. So how dangerous is it? Boston.com notes:

The main health concern is the impact on fish near the nuclear plant. Scientists have long believed that contaminated water was reaching the ocean, based in part on continuing high levels of radioactive cesium found in fish living at the bottom of the sea. A rise in strontium-90 and tritium levels in the past few months needs to be watched, said Ken Buesseler, a marine chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Strontium in particular accumulates in fish bones and remains longer than cesium in fish and the humans that eat them. The fisheries off Fukushima are currently closed.

There have also been a number of panicky reports proclaiming that radiation from Fukushima has or soon will be causing significant problems in the United States. However, MSN News reports:

Radioactive fallout from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will be hitting the shores of the United States in 2014, about three years after a tsunami and hurricane damaged the plant. But experts tell MSN News that any waste reaching the states should be completely harmless."Yes, we do expect radioactive material to reach the U.S. coast by March 2014, but the concentrations in the water are more than a thousand times less than what is considered safe drinking water by the World Health Organization," said Erik van Sebille, lead author of a study tracing the radioactive fallout from the disaster.

Stars and Stripes notes:

Most scientists who have been monitoring activity at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant say the current radioactive outflows do not pose a significant health risk beyond the surrounding prefecture and its waters — but a lack of data on some isotopes and an uncertain containment solution have those scientists less sure about the long-term risks.

The Fukushima disaster and the possible long-term effects on the environment are certainly of concern, not only to Japan, but to the world as a whole. And that is why it is vital that discussions of the issue use verified facts rather than lies, hearsay and misinformation.

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/fukushima...les-hoax.shtml