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

Who's to say?

[PopeRatzo]

"How do we know this radiation isn't actually good for you? I mean, the Sun's heat is radiation, right?"

- Trump's new director of the Department of Energy.

[Note: If you think I'm somehow exaggerating, you might find tonight's story about Trump's new Department of Energy "enemies list" an interesting read:}

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Re:Who's to say?

[Sarten-X]

If it were true that long-term low level radiation were unquestionably harmful, you'd expect to find a clear negative trend.

No, that's not what we'd expect to find at all.

We'd expect to find at the high end a certain level of radiation that is absolutely lethal, and as the dose is reduced, the impact would drop down steadily, until a zone where life expectancy is reduced. However, that life expectancy is more or less on an absolute scale, and must be compared to the life expectancy of the species being exposed. An insect may survive high doses of radiation simply because it wouldn't normally live long enough to exhibit symptoms, while a longer-lived animal like a human will likely survive long enough to get cancer that ultimately causes death.

At a very low dose, the chances of having any noticeable symptom from radiation is unlikely enough that it could equally likely be caused by millions of other factors, so usually nobody cares. There is still a negative trend in survivability, but it's dwarfed by all of the other fatal conditions.

Too little radiation and the species dies due to inability to keep pace with changing environmental conditions.

Radiation isn't the only mechanism for mutation, though. Rather, it's the fast and cheap way to make a lot of mutations really fast, usually in places that cannot possibly contribute to evolution.

In order to change the species, an offspring's DNA must be mutated. That's dependent on a few thousand cells out of the trillions in a human body. Those particular cells are the ones involved in meiosis, splitting and reassembling the DNA that will become half of the offspring. During that reassembly process is where most mutations happen, usually by random chemical processes rather than any radiation. This enzyme doesn't successfully react with that protein, so a gene gets skipped or altered or inserted... It is extremely rare that a gene is altered by radiation during the process.

Once an offspring's development begins, though, the effects of mutations become more pronounced. If radiation mutates a single cell during early stages of growth, that fetus will develop with a cluster of mutated cells. Unless those cells are destined to become a gonad, however, the mutation will die with that generation, and the species will not change.

Similarly, radiation affecting a mature individual is is unlikely to have any positive effect, as the mutation is almost always either destructive or irrelevant. The proper functioning of a human body requires millions of interactions between tens of thousands of proteins, so randomly changing one protein is more likely to break something than to add new functionality. Of course, as before, even breaking something is only going to affect the species if it happens to occur in a cell involved in reproduction.

It is important to remember that evolution is never towards anything. It is away from an inability to reproduce (usually due to death). As an illustration, you must realize that you are the result of an unbroken line of millions of ancestors dating back millions of years, and every single one of those millions of ancestors were fertile and successful in mating. There is no scorecard in evolution. Either you pass on your genes, or you don't. It doesn't matter if your changing environment caused you severe illness or discomfort. As long as you manage to find a mate and make a child, you've won the natural selection game.

In short, radiation is a purely random occurrence with purely random effects, and the odds of any particular radiation-caused mutation being beneficial are so absurdly small that it is absolutely safe to say that overall, there is no safe dose.

Compared to bananas

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's nothing. One cubic meter of seawater weighs about 1026 kg. The same mass of bananas would have about 133,400 bequerels of radiation. This is about 4.4 MILLION times higher than what is being discussed here. So - if you're worried about the Fukushima radiation in the water off Oregon's coast, you better steer clear of the banana pile at the local grocery because it will bathe you with orders of magnitude more radiation.

Re:Compared to bananas

[Waccoon]

Just playing devil's advocate here, but can the human body metastasize cesium as well as potassium?

The real danger of radiation is not the dose you get from the environment, but the radioactive material getting inside you and staying there. You can hold an ingot of plutonium in your hand wearing little more than a nitrile glove, but don't dare breathe the dust.

We need progressive nuclear programs.

[BlueCoder]

Nuclear energy is cheap. We need more progressive programs. We should have been doubling the number of reactors every 15 years. All the first gen reactors should have been torn down and rebuilt already. 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...

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.

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

Re:We need progressive nuclear programs.

[Alwin Henseler]

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

Second that. I've been a long time green party voter, and as much as I like seeing solar panels on an ever increasing # of homes, reality is that solar + wind can't cover 100% of our energy needs right now. Period. Not unless / until the storage problem is solved. The sun doesn't shine at night, the wind doesn't always blow (and sometimes too hard!), and no amount of solar panels will fix that. Hydro could be used as backup, but has its own drawbacks & only possible in a few places. Geothermal etc is interesting, but again: far from practical everywhere.

So for filling in the gaps we NEED something else, no way around it. Between 'cheap' coal, oil, natural gas, or covering land masses with biofuel crops, a modern design nuclear plant isn't a bad option. Yes environmentalists may have speeded up investment in solar projects etc (and I applaud anyone for that no matter the reasons), but in resisting (modern) nuclear they've kinda lost sight that thus we're currently on an energy mix where fossil is still king. That could have been very different if modern nuclear plants were common today.

And no, nuclear waste isn't the be-all-end-all-problem it's made out to be. Right now it's choosing between evils, and btw nuclear waste: it's all about what exact substances, how much, stored how & where. The waste from eg. a fast breeder reactor is very different stuff than what comes out of another type of nuclear plant. Stuffing it in rockets & shooting it at the sun, has different risks & costs than burying inside a mountain. Material with 300 year half-life needs a different approach than material with a 30,000 year half-life. And so on.

This is what, the third or fourth time?

[cirby]

We've had warnings about "radiation reaching the west coast of the US" a few times already. We've seen similar stories in 2015 and 2014 (a couple of times in each year).

In those, it was Cesium-137. Now, this group is all about Cesium-134, apparently because people didn't get upset enough about the Cesium-137.

"Possible false positives" may be their excuse, but no, it's not the first time someone made the claim of radiation reaching the west coast.

By the way: they weren't kidding about the amount being very small. It's 0.3 decays per cubic meter per second - which is a really, REALLY small number. The most amazing thing about the story is that we can manage to detect something that's so close to zero in real world terms. Three-tenths of a disintegration per second times (approximately) 30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water in a cubic meter of seawater...

(Someone check my math on this: it's late, and I'm sleepy...)