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Fukushima Contaminants Found As Far North As Alaska's Bering Strait
Radioactive contamination from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant hit by a tsunami in 2011 has drifted as far north as waters off a remote Alaska island in the Bering Strait, scientists said on Wednesday. Reuters reports: Analysis of seawater collected last year near St. Lawrence Island revealed a slight elevation in levels of radioactive cesium-137 attributable to the Fukushima disaster, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Sea Grant program said. The newly detected Fukushima radiation was minute. The level of cesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear fission, in seawater was just four-tenths as high as traces of the isotope naturally found in the Pacific Ocean. Those levels are far too low to pose a health concern, an important point for people living on the Bering Sea coast who subsist on food caught in the ocean.
Those levels are far too low to pose a health concern, an important point for people living on the Bering Sea coast who subsist on food caught in the ocean, Sheffield said. Until the most recent St. Lawrence Island sample was tested by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the only other known sign of Fukushima radiation in the Bering Sea was detected in 2014 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Those levels are far too low to pose a health concern, an important point for people living on the Bering Sea coast who subsist on food caught in the ocean, Sheffield said. Until the most recent St. Lawrence Island sample was tested by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the only other known sign of Fukushima radiation in the Bering Sea was detected in 2014 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
There are lots of contaminants from lots of things in lots of places.
We can detect tiny trace amounts of them with the instruments we have today.
And of course there is no health concern. I'm glad that was in the summary, because there are people who are ignorant enough to believe otherwise.
The only people that were happy with Fukushima were the geologists that use nuclear markers in sediment samples. With air testing of nukes long gone and Chernobyl fading there were plenty of labs that popped champagne that day.
New conspiracy theory: The geologists somehow triggered the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, in order to cause the meltdown and create new radioactive markers in the sediment.
Proof: Why else would they have champagne chilled and ready to go?
Like the time a Russian spy satellite powered by a nuclear reactor burned up in the upper atmosphere releasing roughly 90 lbs of uranium particles into the atmosphere? Everyone alive at the time probably has a few atoms of it in their bodies. While trivial compared to background radiation this kind of pollution can easily get out of hand so serious regulation and cleanup is necessary but people shouldn't get too worked up as natural sources of radiation are everywhere and dwarf the trace amounts we are detecting in the op article.
How is 4/10 of normal an elevated level?
Obviously the journalist is an idiot.
Here is a more competently written source: Fukushima radiation found in Bering Sea.
The concentration of cesium 137 went from 2.0 to 2.4 becquerels per cubic meter.
Nah, geologists have got rocks in their heads. :)
You shouldn't have the same sentence twice in a summary.
Way too low to be any impact to life, and probably below the level of detection just 10 years ago. The problem arises when we can detect things - way below safe levels - and people go OMG WE HAVE XXX PRESENT!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The Pacific Ocean in the Northern Hemisphere circulates in a clockwise direction. That puts Alaska as the 2nd place the current will reach after Russia.
This isn't news. This is expected.