Even 300 tonnes [a day] — that's still going to be diluted to an almost undetectable level before it would get to any US territory," said the Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRA)commission's information officer, Scott Burnell.
In an article appearing in the Scientific American website, August 9, 2013 (Reuters' by Mari Saito. Antoni Slodowski ) entitled: "Japan says Fukushima leak worse than thought. Government joins clean up," the authors underscore the recent revelations that large volumes of radioactive water have been leaking form the plant site.
Though the Fukushima disaster, now more than two years away has faded in the public's consciousness, it has evidently not faded as a threat to the Japanese fishing industry and perhaps to the the well being of the nations on the rim of Pacific Basin.
The horrific disaster has morphed into a suppurating wound that threatens fish life in the Pacific and the fishermen who depend on the sea for their food and livelihood. We now know that as much as 300 tons of highly radioactive water is seeping each day from the plant site into the Pacific Ocean. That amount of radioactive water is equal to about 2 1/2 million liters or nearly 700,000 gallons per week...the water volume in an Olympic swimming pool It is estimated that ocean currents will eventually carry these pools of contaminated water to our western shores. Some estimate their arrival may be as soon as 2017. But as Scott Burnell of the NRA claims, dilution will save us from these effects. True the concentrations of radio cesium in the water column will be diluted, but the process of bioaccumulation will not be altered and fish in the food food chain will likely have higher concentrations of radio cesium than they do have now. The problem is that the living food web in the Pacific Ocean is capable of concentrating and magnifying even minuscule levels of radionucleides in the water to dangerous radioactive doses in top tier predator fish. That effect will not be altered by dilution.
Japanese Prime administer Shinzo Abe, a staunch nuclear power supporter, has been hesitant to act permitting TEPCO to focus on restarting their plants rather than facing the disaster at Fukushima site. With these present revelations he has finally been forced to take over control of the clean up. TEPCO, after 2 1/2 years has not been able to get the damaged plant under control or prevent the environmental disaster that is now unfolding. This should have been done two years ago.
TEPCO, the plant operator, has only just recently admitted that water is seeping from the plant into the Pacific Ocean. This is all very troubling. But the real threat is an economic one and not just for Japan but worldwide. Another troubling aspect is the "circling of the wagons" attitude by our own NRA seemingly more concerned about supporting nuclear power here in the US rather than facing up to its apparent short comings and danger to our world ecology.
Since the disaster, commercial fishing has been halted in the region of northeastern Japan. Fishermen in that area have been unable to operate or sell fish except to the government which simply analyzes their catch for radioactivity and consistently finds them too radioactive for consumption. See The Guardian, August 9, "Toxic Fukushima fallout threatens fisher men's livelihoods" Justin McCurry in Hisanohama, The Guardian, Friday 9 August 2013 13.56 EDT
Author McCurry quotes US Nuclear Regulatory Agency official Scott Burnell, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency information (disinformation?)officer and frequent apologist for the nuclear industry and their mishaps. Burnell spoke up promptly to underscore a "new" Nuclear Regulatory Commission talking point. After Three Mile Island, Chernobyl,too numerous little-reported nuclear industry leaks and disasters, and now the massive disaster at Fukushima, it has become difficult or impossible to stick to the mantra of the NRA that NUCLEAR POWER IS SAFE. Now the post-Fukushima line is: "Don't worry it is only 300 tons a day and so far away it will not affect us! ". To understand the twisted logic of these officials one must grasp the fact of the conflict inherent in Mr Burnell's position. He is part of an organization tasked with both regulating an industry and acting as its proponent for growth and expansion. The task is impossible. The NRA can not be unbiased in its evaluation. Its pronouncements generally fall well within the sway of the powerful nuclear power industry. In considering the NRA's position, we are reminded of the circumstances of the Fukushima disaster. That is just how the Japanese faltered and Fukushima was allowed to occur--- a too close relationship between TEPCO and the government regulators who were tasked with its oversight. We see here the same fault a parasitic relationship between the NRA and the nuclear industry.
Burnell's statement:. "Even 300 tonnes [a day] — that's still going to be diluted to an almost undetectable level before it would get to any US territory," is an example of the protectionist instinct of the NRA for ITS industry. Burnell was unaware of, or unwilling to discuss the probable outcome of such a massive dumps of nuclear waste water into the Pacific, that is long-term effects on the fauna due to bioaccumulation.
Can we assume that the Commission's information officer has never heard of biomagnification (bioaccumulation)? Fukushima presents us not with the simple dilution problem Burnell would like you to think it is. Pour a bottle of ink into one end of a swimming pool and give it a wew hours, and the ink pigment has dissipated, never to be detected on the other side of the pool due dilution and mass of the intervening water. But some substances, DDT, mercury and radioactive cesium 137 among them, are known to BIOACCUMULATE (biomagnify) in the marine food web, tainting the fish we would like to harvest. That would be a monstrous disaster....and a awful black eye for the nuclear industry and one that would be well deserved.
In the 1950s DDT was the most widely used pesticide. It was considered to be completly harmless to humans since it could not be absorbed by the human skin. For that reason in earlier times it was widely used to control lice on people, since it killed the lice but had no effect on their human hosts. It was used widely in the environment, in agriculture, and on cattle. On eastern Long Island where I lived as a young boy, it was the premiere agricultural pesticide, sprayed and dumped widely with little regard for safety. I remember seeing farmers pouring the white powder into their potato dusters and sprayers and mixing the slurry with their hands and arms. DDT was aerial sprayed on the salt marshes to keep down mosquitos. Soon it was so widely used that it was a very common constituent at low concentrations in the soil, the Sound and ground water on Long Island and in the nation as a whole. But the government and its scientists did not take into account the ability of the food web to concentrate such chemicals to unexpected levels.
In the late 1950s the US government's plan to eradicate the scourge of fire ants by a wide ranging program of aerial spraying, aroused the scientific community to oppose the increasingly widespread use of petroleum based pesticides. One of those involved was Rachel Carson, a marine scientist, writer, activist, and popular author ("Silent Spring" 1962). Her life's work was to expose the dangers of pesticides to the natural and marine environment and explain how even tiny concentrations of pesticides in water and soil can be magnified by the natural processes of the food web into harmful or lethal concentrations in the organisms at the top of the food chain. This process is known as biomagnification. For example, in the ocean, hardly detectable levels of mercury, a metal derived from the burning of coal, mining and smelting processes, can come in contact with algae and tiny planktonic (floating) organisms which will absorb and retain the mercury. Small fish graze on the contaminated plankton and incorporate it into THEIR bodies. Over their lifetimes the small fish eat many times their weight of plankton, absorbing and magnifying the mercury concentration in their own bodies which absorb and retain the mercury. Larger fish eat many times their weight of these smaller fish and etcetera, etcetera. As a result, the top predators such as bluefish, sharks, sailfish, and the marvelous tuna, one of the top predators and premiere food fish, has mercury concentrated in its flesh. As a result, consumers are warned to eat only small amounts of tuna per month and for pregnant mothers to avoid this nutritious fish altogether. In another example, in the ocean, the general level of mercury concentration in herring, a common schooling fish or part of the "nekton" which are prey for larger fish, is often quoted as at 0.01 parts per million (ppm), while the shark, a top predator which preys on the nekton, has concentrations of 1 ppm ----or one hundred times higher.
The Fukushima disaster has released large quantities of radionucleides into the air and more recently by dumping Olympic sized pool volumes of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. Among them is Cesium 137 (Ce 137) or radio cesium an artificial element, a fission product unique as an element produced by man and an all too common by-product of nuclear accidents. Ce 137 is produced by fission in nuclear reactors, has a half live of thirty years, and decays by high energy pathways which make contact with it dangerous. It is highly soluble, and is chemically reactive. It moves and spreads in nature rapidly due to the fact that upon release it creates compounds which are salts which are highly soluble. Upon entering the body, radio cesium concentrates in muscle tissues. Its residence time in the body or "biological half life" is about 70 days. That is, about one-half of the cesium is eliminated over the that period. Though in nature animals continue to feed and would continually reingest cesium-contaminated smaller fish or prey animals over the two month plus period.
Though some studies suggest that the high levels of potassium in sea water, low sediment concentrations in deep water and other factors may modulate the effects of Ce 137 uptake and bioaccumulation in marine fish, there have been few definitive studies to confirm this. On the other hand several studies indicate that it does take place in the marine environment. The recent collection of fish with higher concentrations of cesium than were recorded right after the disaster and which were collected large distances from the plant site and at varying depths now more than two years after the earthquake and tsunami, suggest that bioaccumulation IS occurring. Even if the bioaccumulation process is less than expected or minimized by the characteristics of the deep ocean what effect will it have on the edible fish harvested in the Pacific? Will fish be too radioactive to eat safely? To date it is not known how much bioaccumulation will occur in the Pacific basin as a result of the Fukushima disaster and the massive release of contaminated ground water.
Thus as concerned citizens, parents, and consumers of sea food we should be wary of officials making blanket statements such as: "even three hundred tones of waste water" would be diluted to "almost undetectable levels" before reaching US territories. The NRA officials can not know that to be true. Such statements sound like words of an uncertain and frightened official, looking to push the facts and real dangers under the proverbial carpet...to save their own jobs and reputations.
Get the picture?
rjk
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