Radiation detected 400 miles off Japanese coast

[bathroommonkey76]

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Radioactive contamination from the Fukushima power plant disaster has been detected as far as almost 400 miles off Japan in the Pacific Ocean, with water showing readings of up to 1,000 times more than prior levels, scientists reported Tuesday.

But those results for the substance cesium-137 are far below the levels that are generally considered harmful, either to marine animals or people who eat seafood, said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

He spoke Tuesday in Salt Lake City at the annual Ocean Sciences Meeting, attended by more than 4,000 researchers this week.

The results are for water samples taken in June, about three months after the power plant disaster, Buesseler said. In addition to thousands of water samples, researchers also sampled fish and plankton and found cesium-137 levels well below the legal health limit.

Read more here:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_FUKUSHIMA_OCEAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-02-21-15-59-17

[truedelphi]

1. When I hear about how safe things are with the radiation situation,

I keep flashing back to the three-eyed fish on Marge Simpson's dinner platter, and how Mr Burns suddenly decided that he couldn't bring himself to eat the fish from that pond outside his nuke power station.

Any researcher tht says these exposures are safe should be required to drink all the water they are testing (using reverse opsmsis to filter out the salt.) And then we can see how many of them have cancers, immune disorders, and are dead some five years from now.

My spouse has a Japanese pen pal, and her reports on what she is finding in the city streets of outlying Tokyo are really scary. And radioactivity doesn't disapate just because it moves some 400 miles away fromits source.

[FirstLight]

4. please tell!

I am interested to hear the reports from "on the ground" ...is she walking around with a gieger counter, or is it something else?

[truedelphi]

6. Here's text and original source (edited out personal name)

ews.yahoo.com/japans-fukushima-reactor-may-reheating-operator-234153498.html;_ylc=X3oDMTBtbXVzdWFnBF9TAwRlbWFpbElkAzEzMjkxODEzNTc-?bcmt_s=e


Yes J____,

I have a Geiger Counter, and have found hot spots all over Tokyo, Yokohama and Kanagawa-ken.

Even near my beach that I go surfing on. They were very afraid that if the winds were very wrong, this whole area would have had to have been evacuated. I have an American Passport, so was was not worried about me, but worried about friends and loved ones.

Hot spots are usually found near drainage from flat roofed buildings. The highest I found was 2.4 µSv That is almost 5 times the limit. What is sad is that there are always foot prints of little kids, cats and dogs in this dirt. If you take off your shoes and touch the bottom, then your skin, mouth eyes etc., you contaminate yourself.

I love the Japanese and Japan. But the government just lies over and over again. Reactor two right this moment is heating up again, and if it hits 100 degrees C, then we have more trouble.

The poor day workers that are sent up to work there can expect an early death. But there is no other work.

This situation is far from over.

####end of posted comments from Japan

My comments:
And of course, our president is planning on offering up as a loan, some 58 Billions of dollars, to ensure that GE and the rest of them can merrily continue their work here in the USA. Why do they care? If anything goes wrong, there certainly are enough unemployed Americans to work the DANGER FIELDS that would result.

[Fortran]

7. By all means, let us formulate policy based on a television comic/comedy show.

[DeSwiss]

8. That would be better than leaving policy formation to the NRC. :-/ n/t

[truedelphi]

10. I would certainly rather have Marge Simpson make decisions rather than

the usual political suspects. This says more about the revolving doors between industry, and Washington DC's federal agency, than my having some weird hang up regarding cartoon characters.

And when the Head of the NRC did show some common sense recently, his underlings started this campaign of how he was a bad manager.

[Fortran]

11. No doubt.

[chervilant]

14. hmm...

Do you think that patronizing truedelphi with this not-funny snark assuages the concerns of a growing number of people about the nuclear contamination commensurate with the Fukushima disaster?

[chervilant]

15. Oh, never mind...

I see by your profile that you've only been a 'DUer' for two days. Judging from the caliber of your posts, you're likely to be tombstoned before you can respond to my query.

[Fortran]

25. I wouldn't have ever slept again if you hadn't offered that opinion.

[chervilant]

26. aww...

What a pity.

[Warren DeMontague]

2. the slow-mo nightmare continues

and it's not going away any time soon.

[stonecutter357]

3. K&R...

[Brettongarcia]

5. It's on its way HERE. Just a matter of time.

And? Just one atom of radioactive cesium or plutonium, I suggest, is enough to cause a single to mutate into a cancer. Then add that up with all the thousands of other carcinogenic materials out there? And I suggest your chance of cancer is 100%. A figure we are already approaching in prostates.

Remember: Homer Simpson works in a nuclear plant.

[Fortran]

12. cause a single to mutate?

Yeah, that's awfully scary.

[mistertrickster]

27. Fortran, you've been alerted on as a disruptor-troll.

Personally, I think you are.

But if you aren't, you'll find that "we must cave in to big oil" is what a disruptor-troll would say and is going to make your stay a short one.

[DeltaLitProf]

9. Very surprised the AP covered this at all.

When I google fukushima lately, I get very few new stories, except from Japan itself or from fringe websites trading in what I hope is only hysteria.

[Fortran]

13. Your hopes are completely justified.

[freefall]

16. An excellent source for accurate information about fukushima is Dr. Arne Gundersen

This link is to a radio interview he did with Dr. Helen Caldicott on February 11. It's billed as his first update on Fukushima of 2012.

http://fairewinds.com/content/arnold-gundersen-first-2012-fukushima-update-more-dr-caldicott%E2%80%99s-2011-speech-berlin

www.fairewinds.com is Dr. Gundersen's website.

[truedelphi]

18. Thanks for this link, freefall.

I am going to add it in as my response, with acknowledgement to you, and then put it in my Journal to have as a permanent reference.

From DU'er freefall
16. An excellent source for accurate information about fukushima is Dr. Arne Gundersen

View profile

This link is to a radio interview he did with Dr. Helen Caldicott on February 11. It's billed as his first update on Fukushima of 2012.

http://fairewinds.com/content/arnold-gundersen-first-2012-fukushima-update-more-dr-caldicott%E2%80%99s-2011-speech-berlin

www.fairewinds.com is Dr. Gundersen's website.

[freefall]

19. You're more than welcome, truedelphi

I am happy to have provided something useful.

I have recently returned to DU after several year's absence and only yesterday discovered that I could hit the "My Posts" tab and find out if anyone had responded to one of my posts. And just this morning in another post I experimented with the buttons at the top of the "Message text:" box and formatted some things. I feel like a kid with a new toy.

[dixiegrrrrl]

22. Also several very interesting video updates can be found here:

http://fairewinds.com/updates

[reACTIONary]

17. I recently had heard a lecture by one of the NRC emergency response team members...

... who helped out with the Fukushima Daiichi accident. He helped take the measurements that established the evacuation zone around the area. The American response team had far more capability than the Japanese did. I asked why that was, and he said that one reason is our experience developing and testing nuclear weapons. We developed a pretty sophisticated radiation detection and monitoring capability.

He briefed the radiation monitoring and reporting that was carried out here in the continental United States. I told him that my intuition was that the Fukushima incident could not really pose a threat to the continental united states and wondered if that was wrong.

His answer was politic. He said something along the lines that scientific expectations would be consistent with my intuition, but public concerns were high and required a serious threat assessment.

I personally don't think that we (continental united states) have anything to be concerned about from this incident.

[cstanleytech]

20. "found cesium-137 levels well below the legal health limit" So this is major news why then?

I mean if it had read as "found cesium-137 levels well above the legal health limit" I could see it being a major news story worthy of reporting but why are levels that are below being written about? Bored reporter?

[Neoma]

23. Hmmm.

Too soon to be checking things like that, you'd think.

[snooper2]

24. Radiation found in the hallway at Snooper2's house

I'll be okay though