Seaborne Cesium 134, a radioactive isotope released by the 2011
Fukushima disaster, has been detected on the US’ Pacific coast for the
first time by independent researchers.
After the catastrophic triple meltdown at
the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011, the Japanese
government and the plant’s parent company, Tokyo Electric Power Company
(TEPCO), worked to cover up the damage done and downplay the amount of radiation the disaster had released into the environment. Though the disaster’s many impacts have
been suspiciously absent from mainstream media reports in the years
since the radiation pouring out of the plant’s damaged reactors have
never stopped.
Fukushima Radiation Disaster
To this day, 300 tons of contaminated, radioactive water flow into the Pacific Ocean every day as
many of the leaks can never be sealed due to the extreme heat. Now,
nearly six years after the meltdown, radiation from Fukushima has made landfall on
the West coast of the United States, signaling a dangerous new era for
residents and wildlife along the Pacific coastal region.Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI),
a crowd-funded team of scientists, announced yesterday that they had
detected, for the first time, seaborne cesium 134 in seawater on the
shores of Tillamook Bay in Oregon. The group has been monitoring the
waterborne radiation as it extends from Fukushima across the Pacific for
years. According to WHOI as well as other scientists, cesium 134, a
dangerous and carcinogenic radioactive isotope, could only have
originated from the Fukushima disaster due to its short half-life, or
rate of decay.
The
samples themselves contained 0.3 becquerels/m3 of the isotope, a
relatively small amount that some researchers and corporate media
outlets say poses “no risk to humans or the environment.” However, there is no such thing as “safe” amounts of radiation, which is particularly true of radioactive cesium as it imitates potassium within the body.
Japanese citizens were also told there was nothing to worry about, despite the fact that cancer rates have spiked since
the incident. The real and unstated danger here is that of
bioaccumulation. Bioaccumulation refers to the gradual build-up over
time of chemicals in an organism, absorbing the substance at a faster
rate than it is excreted.
Now that Fukushima Radiation Has Reach US
Now, that Fukushima radiation has reached the US, those living on the
West Coast or eating fish from that region could be at risk if they
consume radioactive water or fish as all consumed cesium would remain in
their body, continuously causing damage until it is excreted.
Children are said to be especially at risk. Another reason why there
is cause for concern is that these samples were actually collected in
January 2016 and not tested until recently, suggesting that landfall may
have happened earlier than thought. This, in turn, would also mean that
higher levels of cesium as more of Fukushima’s radiation has made
contact with Western coastal shores in the months since as researchers
have said that radiation will not “peak” until well after the plume’s
initial landfall.
No matter how often the Japanese government, TEPCO, or the corporate
media say that radiation from Fukushima is nothing to worry, ignoring a
problem does not make it go away. The world’s oceans, particularly the
Pacific Ocean, are in the midst of an unprecedented crisis as mass die-offs of fish and coral are
signaling that something is horribly wrong. These trends, combined with
the devastating effects of over-fishing, led the World Wildlife Fund
to recently warn that all marine life could die out before the year 2050, less than forty years from now.
It is incredible that a nuclear disaster that has leaked 300 tons of
radioactive water into the ocean every day for the last five years could
have no effect on the massive environmental crisis unfolding before our
eyes. Until Fukushima’s consequences are acknowledged and treated with
the concern they clearly merit, we will continue to be unable to
understand the true scope of the problem.
