Fukushima's Radioactive Ocean Water Arrives At N. American West Coast

[n2doc]

Radiation from Japan's leaking Fukushima nuclear power plant has reached waters offshore Canada, researchers said today at the annual American Geophysical Union's Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu.

Two radioactive cesium isotopes, cesium-134 and cesium-137, have been detected offshore of Vancouver, British Columbia, researchers said at a news conference. The detected concentrations are much lower than the Canadian safety limit for cesium levels in drinking water, said John Smith, a research scientist at Canada's Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Tests conducted at U.S. beaches indicate that Fukushima radioactivity has not yet reached Washington, California or Hawaii, said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass.

"We have results from eight locations, and they all have cesium-137, but no cesium-134 yet," Buesseler said. (Isotopes are atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. In this case, cesium-137 has more neutrons than cesium-134.)

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http://www.livescience.com/43631-fukushima-radiation-ocean-arrives-west-coast.html

[longship]

1. Thank goodness for the size of the Pacific.

It is not likely to become a danger. But they should keep monitoring.

R&K

on edit: I didn't know British Columbia was the US west coast. Might want to correct that.

[Warren DeMontague]

2. Put me down as in favor of vigorous continued monitoring, too.

From what i've read, hydrogen bomb testing in the late 50s dumped larger concentrations into the pacific than Fukushima has, not that that makes it okay.