No, this is not radiation from Fukushima

In March of 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was hit by a tsunami triggered by the magnitude 9.0 Tōhoku earthquake.  Three operating nuclear reactors suffered partial meltdowns and a fourth reactor which was not in service suffered hydrogen explosions which threaten the containment of highly radioactive spent fuel rods. Significant radiation was released into both the air and into the ocean. The Fukushima disaster is the largest nuclear incident since the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986 and the second (after Chernobyl) to measure Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.  One ongoing problem is that Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the Japanese utility company that operates the plant, has been grossly incompetent, deceptive and guilty of downplaying the extent of the damage.  Tepco initially denied that radioactive cooling water had leaked into the ocean and then belated admitted that many hundreds of tons had been leaking and continue to leak into Pacific.

While Tepco has been downplaying the problem, some in the United States have been spreading wild, bizarre wholly dishonest claims about the extent of the radiation from Fukushima. These Fuskushima fear mongers have not quite started screaming ‘We are all going to die!” but they have come disturbingly close.  One article that went viral on the web is titled: “28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima.”  Another popular example was titled: “FUKUSHIMA: Your Days of Eating Pacific Ocean Fish Are Over, Or Worse.” And then there is “HOLY FUKUSHIMA – RADIATION FROM JAPAN IS ALREADY KILLING NORTH AMERICANS.”  Recently a Youtube video has emerged shouting: HORROR ” Pacific Ocean Now Dead From Fukushima Radiation.”  There are many more fear mongering posts and videos like these often repeating the same half-truth distortions and outright lies in a weird sort of hysterical echo chamber.  (I have decided not to include links to the craziest of the the fear-mongers.  I would prefer not to send them any more traffic than they already receive. If you wish to read the original articles, Google the titles above, or better yet, click on the links provided below to actual scientists who explain why the fear mongers are wrong. )

Why haven’t we heard more about the grave threat? Obviously because it is all a great conspiracy and the media is lying to us, or so argues another hysterical screed, “36 SIGNS THE MEDIA IS LYING ABOUT FUKUSHIMA RADIATION HITTING THE WEST COAST.”  (If factual reality doesn’t support your particular hysteria, it must be because there is a massive conspiracy covering it up.  Yeah, that’s the answer.)

The hysteria, of course, is simply crazy. The claims made range from complete non-sequiturs, to half truths, to distortions, to outright lies.  The fear mongers point out that some polar bears have been losing their hair without noting that scientists say that the cause is known and not related to Fukushima or radiation. They scream about radiation levels without mentioning that the recorded levels are far below allowable levels and usually well below natural background radiation.  They post brightly colored graphics which show radiation flowing from Japan and hitting the US West Coast.  Of course, the graphics are fiction or misrepresented. One viral graphic claims to show radiation spreading across the Pacific, when it is in fact a NOAA graphic which shows wave heights due to the tsunami.

Why is all this a problem?  The Fukushima fear mongers makes it far too easy for pro-nuclear activists to dismiss all concerns about Fukushima, in particular, and  nuclear power in general.  They also make it difficult for the rest of us to find the truth as to what is going on. Fortunately, there are scientists out their who are doing good work to quantify exactly how serious the radiation risks really are and who also have taken the time to explain why the claims made by the Fukushima fear mongers are simply nuts.

One excellent source is Dr. Kim Martini, a physical oceanographer at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington in Seattle, who writes for Deep Sea News, authored an excellent post, True facts about Ocean Radiation and the Fukushima Disaster.  Referring to the fear mongers’ posts, she writes:

I’m here to tell you that these posts are just plain garbage. While there are terrible things that happened around the Fukushima Power Plant in Japan; Alaska, Hawaii and the West Coast aren’t in any danger. These posts were meant to scare people (and possibly written by terrified authors). They did just that, but there is a severe lack of facts in these posts. Which is why I am here to give you the facts, and nothing but the facts.

Dr. Martini’s article is well worth reading in full.  Deep Sea News is an excellent source of information about the sea.

Fortunately, many  institutions are working to quantify the amount of radiation attributable to Fukushima.  Several are   using crowdsourcing to collect data.

At the University of Victoria in British Columbia, CA, chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen is “leading the formation of a new marine radioactivity monitoring network that will engage scientists in Canada and the US, health experts, non-governmental organizations—and citizen scientists along the British Columbia coast.  The InFORM Network—which stands for Integrated Fukushima Ocean Radionuclide Monitoring—is being funded by $630,000 over three years by the Marine Environmental Observation Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR).”  The project website: FUKUSHIMA INFORM

Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institution also has a similar project. Their website asks directly, How Radioactive is Our Ocean?    They go on to say  “The release of radioactive contaminants from Fukushima remains an unprecedented event for the people of Japan and the Pacific Ocean. Help scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reveal the ongoing spread of radiation across the Pacific and its evolving impacts on the ocean.”

And what are the results from these projects so far? How much radiation from Fukushima is in the water on the West Coast?

First a bit of background.  The type of radiation of most concern is from radioactive cesium.  There are several isotopes of cesium to be concerned with. Cesium 137 has a half life of around 30 years, which means that trace amounts of cesium released in atomic testing in the Pacific in the 1960s can still be detected in water samples today.  Cesium 134, on the other hand, has a half life of  around 2 years, so any Cesium 134 detected is definitely from Fukushima.

So how much radiation did Woods Hole observe?  As of their August 14th update, 43 samples did show trace elements of Cesium 137 at levers roughly 1/5,000 of the EPA allowed levels in drinking water. And Cesium 134?  Woods Hole found no trace of this marker for Fukushima radiation. Nada, Zero. Nothing. They do note however, that  “we emphasize that cesium-134 has not been detected “YET” as it has been detected offshore of North America by Canadian oceanographers.”  So what about the claim that the “West Coast is being absolutely fried with nuclear radiation from Fukushima”?   I believe the scientific term for this claim is “batshit-crazy.”

OK, but what about fish? What about fish swimming from Japan and carrying deadly radiation in their flesh?  The  FUKUSHIMA INFORM site has a post that addresses that question:   Looking For Fukushima Radionuclides in Fish Caught Off the West Coast of Canada.  They found that the radiation present in the fish, assuming that a person ate 20 kg (44 pounds) of Fukushima contaminated fish a year, was roughly 190 times less than the normal background radiation.   In fact, the radiation in the “contaminated fish” was 450 times lower than if you smoked on cigarette a day.  Finally, the radiation from the 20 kg of fish is only 1/2,000 of the typical radiation that a person is exposed to in Victoria, CA.

So, yes, the concerns about radiation from Fukushima are serious and real, but the fear mongering does no one any good.