According to Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who also runs the crowd-funded, citizen science seawater sampling project, Our Radioactive Ocean, the levels of Cesium-134, considered a Fukushima “fingerprint,” are very low.
Following the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit the Japanese coast in March 2011, massive amounts of radiation-contaminated water were released into the Pacific Ocean. More radiation joined the plume, falling from the sky. Scientists have been tracking the ocean plume as it has spread across the Pacific.
Samples of seawater taken along the coast of Oregon at Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach earlier this year had measurable levels of Cesium-134, according to Buesseler. This is the first time Cesium-134 has been found in U.S. waters and could only come from Fukushima.
Buesseler puts the radiation levels into perspective. In a telephone interview with USA Today, he said: “To put it in context, if you were to swim everyday for six hours a day in those waters for a year, that additional radiation from the addressed cesium from Japan … is 1000 times smaller than one dental x-ray.”
Greater levels of Cesium-134 and Cesium-137, already present in the world’s oceans because of nuclear weapon testing years ago, are expected to arrive with the bulk of the radiation plume in the near future.
Also for the first time, Cesium-134 has been detected in a Canadian salmon, according to the Fukushima InFORM project, led by University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen. The project is a partnership with a dozen academic, government and non-profit organizations, including Woods Hole.
In November, Fukushima InForm reported that a sockeye salmon taken from Okanagan Lake in the summer of 2015, had tested positive for Cesium-134. Thankfully, the level was 1,000 times lower than what Canada considers dangerous.
Buesseler says that scientists have turned to crowdfunding to measure the radiation plume from the Fukushima disaster because federal agencies are not funding any research on ocean radioactive studies stemming from the 2011 nuclear event.
“We don’t expect to see health concerns from swimming or fish consumption, but we would like to continue monitoring until (the radiation level) goes back down again,” he said.