the same exposure if it were external, especially for women and children. And, because caesium-137 stays in the ecosphere for 300 years, long-term bio-accumulation and bio-concentration of caesium isotopes in the food chain – in this case the ocean food chain – is the perpetually worsening consequence of what has spilled and is still pouring from Fukushima.
The nuclear weapons production complex is the only other industry that has a record of deliberate whole-Earth poisoning. Hundreds of tons of radioactive fallout were aerosolized and spread to the world’s watery commons and landmasses by nuclear bomb testing. The same people then brought us commercial nuclear power reactors. Dirty war spawns dirty business, where lying comes easy. Just as the weapons makers lied about bomb test fallout dangers, nuclear power proponents claimed the caesium spewed from Fukushima would be diluted to infinity after the plume dispersed across 4,000 miles of Pacific Ocean.
Today, globalised radioactive contamination of the commons by private corporations has become the financial, political and health care cost of operating nuclear power reactors. The November 2014 IBT article noted that “The planet’s oceans already contain vast amounts of radiation, as the world’s 435 nuclear power plants routinely pump radioactive water into Earth’s oceans, albeit less dangerous isotopes than caesium.”
Fifty million Becquerels of caesium per-cubic-meter were measured off Fukushima soon after the March 2011 start of the three meltdowns. Caesium-contaminated Albacore and Bluefin tuna were caught off the West Coast a mere four months later; 300 tons of caesium-laced effluent has been pouring into the Pacific every day for the 4 1/2 years since; the Japanese government on September 14 openly dumped 850 tons of partially-filtered but tritium-contaminated water into the Pacific. This latest dumping portends what it will try to do with thousands of tons more now held in shabby storage tanks at the devastated reactor complex.
Officials from Fukushima’s owners, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., have said leaks from Fukushima disaster with ‘at least’ two trillion Becquerels of radioactivity entered the Pacific between August 2013 and May 2014 – and this 9-month period isn’t even the half of it.
The fact that Fukushima has contaminated the entirety of the Pacific Ocean must be viewed as cataclysmic. The ongoing introduction of Fukushima’s radioactive runoff may be slow-paced, and the inevitable damage to sea life and human health may take decades to register, but the “canary in the mineshaft”, is the Pacific tuna population, which should now also be perpetually monitored for caesium.
Last November Buesseler warned, “Radioactive caesium from the Fukushima disaster is likely to keep arriving at the North American coast.” Fish eaters may want to stick with the Atlantic catch for 12 generations or so.
This article originally excerpted from: ‘Fukushima radiation in Pacific reaches west coast’.
Courtesy: Counterpunch.org
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