Radiation From Fukushima Disaster Reaches Oregon Coast (nypost.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New York Post: Radiation from Japan's 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has apparently traveled across the Pacific. Researchers reported that radioactive matter -- in the form of an isotope known as cesium-134 -- was collected in seawater samples from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon. The levels were extremely low, however, and don't pose a threat to humans or the environment. In 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a wave of tsunamis that caused colossal damage to Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The disaster released several radioactive isotopes -- including the dangerous fission products of cesium-137 and iodine-131 -- that contaminated the air and water. The ocean was later contaminated by the radiation. But cesium-134 is the fingerprint of Fukushima due to its short half-life of two years, meaning the level is cut in half every two years. Cesium-137 has a 30-year half-life. Particles from Chernobyl, nuclear weapons tests, and discharge from other nuclear power plants are still detectable -- in small, harmless amounts. While this is the first time cesium-134 has been detected on US shores, Higley said "really tiny quantities" have previously been found in albacore tuna. The Oregon samples were collected by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in January and February. Each sample measured 0.3 becquerels, a unit of radioactivity, per cubic meter of cesium-134 -- significantly lower than the 50 million becquerels per cubic meter measured in Japan after the disaster.

Comments

A banana is much worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind that a banana has an activity of roughly 15 Bq...

Re:radiation was detected

[Anonymous Coward]

You can measure very, very small amounts of radiation very easily. 0.3 becquerels means a single count every 3 seconds, which is only about 20 million cesium 134 atoms in a cubic meter of water, or about one part in 10^20 (one part in a ten billion trillion).

If one wanted to, smaller amounts could be measured if it mattered, but at some point it doesn't. I remember shortly after the earthquake and problems at Fukushima, there was someone who did some atmospheric modeling and worked out how much radioactive material made it by air to the west coast of the US. Their plot showed something made it, but if you read the scale of the plot, you could work out that the activity of the air would be less than that from carbon-14 in a single fart (we need a new unit for that, for things way, way less than even a banana equivalent dose).

For comparison

[Solandri]

1 Bq = 1 radioactive decay per second. It's a tiny, tiny amount. For further reference:

• The amount of K40 and Rb87 in your body gives off about 4600 Bq.
• The K40 (same radioactivity source as in bananas) dissolved in seawater gives off about 12 Bq/L, or about 12,000 Bq per cubic meter. (Cue the alarmists crying that the amount of K40 in your body is static and so we should subtract it. No, you don't subtract it, you divide by it. 0.3 Bq / 4600 = 0.006%. So it's increased the radiation your body normally withstands while staying hale and hearty by 0.006%)
• The Rb87 dissolved in seawater gives off about 0.11 Bq/L, or about 110 Bq per cubic meter.
• The U238 dissolved in seawater gives off about 0.04 Bq/L, or about 40 Bq per cubic meter.
• Heck, the amount of Tritium in seawater gives off about 0.0006 Bq/L, or about 0.6 Bq per cubic meter.
• A granite countertop gives off about 1000 Bq per kg.

If 0.3 Bq / m^3 were dangerous, you'd be dead ten thousand times over just from the natural radioactivity in your own body, a hundred thousand times over from natural radiation from other sources. These measurements of residual radiation from Fukushima are a testament to how good our instruments are at detecting minute quantities of radiation. Not a sign that our oceans are dangerous.

Re: We need progressive nuclear programs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear energy is cheap.

Nope. It's expensive. Just the concrete alone is costly. Mistakes are often extremely costly.

We need more progressive programs.

True, but that won't be happening. Not healthcare. Not pollution control. Not military downsizing.

We should have been doubling the number of reactors every 15 years.

I'm reminded of the Popular Mechanics covers which proclaimed some glorious thing, but it never added up.

Besides, you'd probably juat get blamed for killing the coal industry. You monster.

All the first gen reactors should have been torn down and rebuilt already.

Oh great, more expenses!

Have an excellent track record for 15 years? Well then if you rebuild your current plant with a newer design then you can build and be in charge of a second one...

This would be less of a concern if not for the lies about safety that they've been known to make.

The irony is that if there weren't all the anti nuclear environmental activists then that plant would have been upgraded a long time ago. There are ways to build reactors now that if you drop a bomb on them they still won't melt down.

Thre irony is that you think it is environmental activists that were the problem, when it was one in the TEPCO boardroom. Just like in California during its electrical crisis, the problem was blamed on environmentalists, but the truth reveals it was elsewhere. That was Enron. Fukushima was a bunxh of suits who couldn't admit they had a problem, and one with a solution at hand. The Japanese tend to fall into that trap. They're too concerned about face and shame to address problems.

Give me free electricity and compensation for every screw up and I'd gladly live next to a reactor.

They will not give you free electricity and the compensation will likely be moot since you'll be dead for anything significant.

Feel free to try that at Bellafonte though.