[GPSCC-chat] Radiation From Fukushima In Ocean Is Not Here Yet

[John Thielking]

Good news folks. The radiation from Fukushima has not yet reached the ocean
off the West coast of the US and when it does the levels of radioactivity
in the water are likely to be very low. See below.

John Thielking


<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mothers-for-Peace/183225733141>
Mothers for Peace
<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mothers-for-Peace/183225733141?fref=nf>
57 mins
<https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10152648837873142&id=183225733141>
· San Luis Obispo, CA
<https://www.facebook.com/pages/San-Luis-Obispo-California/113468615330042>
·
<https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10152648837873142&id=183225733141#>

Here's an update on "Our Radioactive Ocean" project:

Greetings to friends and followers of Our Radioactive Ocean,
It’s been just over half a year since we launched Our Radioactive Ocean,
and we have several updates to convey to our supporters.
Website Success
First some statistics. To date, we’ve had over 150,000 views and more than
30 sampling sites launched, thanks to over 370 donations from citizen
scientists sampling the ocean from La Jolla to Alaska and including the
Hawaiian islands. A handful of those sites are also supported into the
future thanks to your efforts. We had no idea what to expect when we
started, but your support and this broad interest makes us even more
motivated to continue!
Our Findings
Using the most sensitive methods to measure your water samples, we have
detected only cesium-137, the “legacy” cesium that remains from 1960s
atmospheric weapons testing. This isotope is still in all ocean basins
because of its relatively long 30-year half-life, which means it takes a
long time to decay away. Levels of cesium-137 in all 43 samples analyzed
thus far average 1.5 Bequerels per cubic meter of water, which is
equivalent to one-and-a-half decay events per second per metric ton of
water. This is a very small number if we compare it to the 7,400 Bq/m3 used
by US EPA as the drinking water limit, and the millions of Bq/m3 of cesium
detected in the ocean off Japan in 2011 at the peak of the accident, which
at that level are of considerable concern for direct negative impacts on
marine biota and human health.
The Fukushima reactors also released cesium-134 into the ocean and because
it has a shorter half-life (2 years) any cesium-134 detected in the ocean
today must have come from Fukushima. Though we do detect this isotope in
abundance off Japan, cesium-134 is not YET present in any of the sample
collected by citizen scientists along the North American west coast and
Hawaii. Our instruments are capable of detecting as little as 0.2 Bq/m3 so
the concentration of cesium-134 is below this level.
We emphasize that cesium-134 has not been detected “YET” as it has been
detected offshore of North America by Canadian oceanographers. It’s
difficult to predict when these radionuclides will arrive onshore because
the mixing of offshore and onshore waters is complicated, and not
represented in the simple models that predicted the arrival onshore of
Fukushima radionuclides this year. The uncertainty in the predictions by
these ocean models only emphasizes the importance of collecting samples
from along the shores. Remember too that while those models predict
increasing levels of both cesium isotopes for the next 2-3 years, the
highest published prediction is for 20-30 Bq/m3, or well below what is
thought to be of human health or fisheries concern. But it’s important to
continue making observations with real data!
Your continued support will help us monitor how, when, and where offshore
water reaches the beaches and what levels of cesium isotopes are
transported by that water.
New Offshore Sampling
These finding have led to some exciting additions to the Our Radioactive
Ocean project including the collection of around 50 new samples collected
offshore using the Research Vessel Point Sur from Moss Landing Marine Labs.
The RV Point Sur left Dutch Harbor, AK, on the Aleutian chain and headed to
Eureka, CA, collecting both surface ocean and water at various depths (many
thanks to Curtis Collins & crew!). Even though we were not funded to
participate, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Now we’ll need to
raise enough funds through OurRadioactiveOcean.org to get these samples
analyzed so we can resolve that critical offshore to onshore gradient in
cesium isotopes.
So keep an eye out on new results from this RV Point Sur cruise and spread
the word to potential donors. We appreciate our supporters who help us
sample along their favorite beaches, but we need to do more than just beach
sampling to resolve what levels are in the oceans and how quickly they will
end up along the coast line.
Website Updates
The second part of this email is to alert you to some updates to the
website. We’ve added a “news and events” button, so you can track media
coverage and updates on events, similar to the public lectures Ken gave in
June along the West Coast (one of those lectures from Vancouver Aquarium is
available to view). Also, keep the sampling photos coming, as we get lots
of positive feedback on your involvement and our growing list of sponsors!
Finally, as we enter the fall, we’ll be working on web improvements, some
you can’t see, but others you can. We want to automate the system to alert
all of the sponsors of a given site when their fundraising goal is met and
when the sample data appear. Right now we only alert the single person
leading the sampling effort because this is done by hand. We also want to
improve our presentation of the results, with easier viewing and
downloading of the data – but that is a bigger job. If you have suggestions
for any other improvements for us to consider, please email us at
ourradioactiveocean at whoi.edu.
We are planning to keep the Our Radioactive Ocean project going as long as
there is interest, so tell your friends about us, and let them know they
can propose new sampling locations, or they can support continued
monitoring at existing sites or help fund our capacity building campaign
which is raising funds so we can process more samples.
Thanks again for your interest,
Ken Buesseler & Colleen Durkin
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20140818/6509409e/attachment.html>