
Fukushima contaminants found as far north as Alaska's Bering Strait - howard941
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alaska-fukushima-idUSKCN1R90BV
======
opportune
Read the article, this is essentially non-news with a jarring headline. Wow,
an already extremely rare isotope in seawater is now 40% higher in
concentration. Do you know what a very small number * 1.4 is? Another very
small number. It has no health effects of any kind and no appreciable affect
on the earth or humanity in any way.

~~~
joe_the_user
These contaminants stories spread unnecessary paranoia among those with an
already irrational fear of things like radiation.

Then they create complacency among those who notice we're talking microscopic
amounts and changes.

But the thing is that this release of radioactive elements can still cause
substantial problems, not everywhere you detect traces but specific areas
where various factors reconcentrate such light or heavy radioactive elements -
the top of the food chain and tbe arctic come to mind but I'd guess we'll find
others.

~~~
opportune
Cesium is highly soluble in water, which in my layman understanding means it
won't bioaccumulate nearly as much as nonsoluble/large substances like mercury
and pesticides.

~~~
devoply
The issues with all of these things that are pragmatic is that the additive
effect of all the little things we have done in the past 100 years over the
course of a very small period of time say 10,000 yeas. So 100 fold is
significant. Progress and growth is an addiction and we're blinded to any
other facts in the face of that. For most of history we have basically 0% or
negative growth... then all the sudden you had massive growth say 3-10% each
year which was to say the least impossible a few hundred years before. To
maintain this sort of monstrous growth you need to create energy and that
means pollution... which adds up over time as many of our technologies are
based around things that are not natural and don't break down.

~~~
lstodd
Cesium-137 half-life is ~30 years. So in 10000 years any additives will fade
to what, something like 10^-100 of what they've been when introduced?

~~~
devoply
Yes I actually did some more research and it seems that even in the case of
Chernobyl this is not a concern in the long run. In that Plutonium is not a
concern in general which has a half-life of up to 300,000 years. And most
other elements decay after a few decades. So in the case of nuclear meltdowns
the concerns are limited to the century in which they happen mostly.

[https://www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/l-3/3-chernobyl-
envi...](https://www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/l-3/3-chernobyl-
environment.htm#2p0)

[https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-
sheets/r...](https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-
sheets/radwaste.html)

I still think the issue exists with other contaminants but with at least
nuclear energy it seems the long term effects of its use in terms of disasters
and even spent fuel are very limited.

~~~
petre
Except Pu is toxic and accumulates in the bone marrow, compared to Cs which is
excreted.

Unit 3 at Fukushima was the only one fueled with MOX fuel containing 6% Pu.

------
godelski
Everything about this says the scientist they interviewed was trying really
hard to stress how safe it is and how non-issue this is.

You need 3kx higher levels to even approach danger levels. All this article
says is that heavy particulate takes a long time to travel from Japan to
Alaska by means of ocean current.

~~~
paulmd
> All this article says is that heavy particulate takes a long time to travel
> from Japan to Alaska by means of ocean current.

Also that we are really good at detecting trace levels of radioactive
materials.

~~~
godelski
That's a good point. We're REALLY good at detecting radiation. Which is why I
usually chime in when an article just says they "detect" levels of radiation.
The distance between detect and danger can be huge (it can also be low, but
that's less common).

------
scott_s
A useful perspective is that we find contaminants from fossil fuel burning
everywhere.

~~~
rosser
I've read, though can't find a citation right now, that we dump more
radioactive gunk into the atmosphere every year, just from burning coal, than
has been released in all the nuclear accidents in history, combined.

~~~
voxadam
Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste — Scientific American

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-
more-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-
radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/)

—

Radiological impact of airborne effluents of coal and nuclear plants

DOI: 10.1126/science.202.4372.1045

~~~
rosser
Thanks! By "can't find", I'd meant, "not in a place where I can take the time"
because my build was about to finish, sorry.

I think this SA article's title is a bit hyperbolic, frankly. The editor's
note even cites the article's text having been changed so as not to say that.
But not the headline...

------
boomboomsubban
For a comparison, remember every living being still has contaminants from the
nuclear bombs detonated over fifty years ago.

------
AareyBaba
I did not realize how bad Fukushima was until I went into a youtube marathon
yesterday. Building a reactor at the shoreline of an earthquake zone was bad
enough but the safety features of the reactor were poor reliability
engineering. "We learned that the reactor design should not rely on external
power sources to prevent it from blowing up" was one of the lessons learnt.

The reactors are leaking and contaminating ground water. The solution is to
store all that water in thousands of tanks and run them through an expensive
decontamination process. They are considering freezing the ground under the
reactor to control the ground water contamination!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBNFvZ6Vr2U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBNFvZ6Vr2U)
Understanding the accident of Fukushima Daiichi

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtwNyUZJgw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtwNyUZJgw8)
Return to Fukushima - PBS

~~~
khuey
"We learned that the reactor design should not rely on external power sources
to prevent it from blowing up"

This has been known for decades. Fukushima (like essentially all nuclear power
plants) had backup diesel generators. But the electrical switching equipment
that connected the generators to several of the reactors were located in areas
that was flooded by the tsunami. Oops.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Also, it had an emergency cooling system (the isolation condenser) which could
work passively without pumped water. Unfortunately the failsafe logic made the
valves to the isolation condenser close when electricity was lost, and then
without electric power the reactor operators could neither open the valves,
nor monitor whether the valves were opened or closed, so it didn't work and
the operators were confused about why.
[[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253938/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253938/)]

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> The newly detected Fukushima radiation was minute. The level of cesium-137,
> a byproduct of nuclear fission, in seawater was just four-tenths as high as
> traces of the isotope naturally found in the Pacific Ocean.

>Those levels are far too low to pose a health concern, an important point for
people living on the Bering Sea coast who subsist on food caught in the ocean,
Sheffield said.

>Cesium-137 levels some 3,000-times higher than those found in the Bering Sea
are considered safe for human consumption under U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency drinking water standards, officials said.

~~~
petre
Of course it's 3k times higher, because it all decayed to Barium 137 aeons
ago.

------
pvaldes
> It was the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl 25 years earlier

First of all: It _is_ the world's worst nuclear disaster. A long way still far
from being a solved problem. The use of "was" here is too optimistic and not
justified.

The article focuses in how radioactive stuff can travel miles and miles and
cross boundaries. Something that is not unexpected but is always interesting
to report and measure. Facing the data is not spreading fear, is improving our
knowledge about a problem.

The water masses in the ocean are not homogeneous. Contrary to what most
people think, the ocean is not a place covered by water; is a place covered by
_waters_. There are many different layers of saltwater that do not mix (or do
it very slowly). If a water mass can transport a low level of radioactivity
between Alaska and Japan, is not impossible having the next month a storm
bringing a different, maybe deeper water mass with more salts and a different
radioactivity level. To measure just one layer is not enough to understand the
entire system and shouldn't be extrapolated as a value for the entire system.
Wouldn't be a wise move.

If we can learn something from the article is that USA will need to remain
vigilant and keep measuring things, ready to apply quick corrective actions
(and close fisheries if necessary) for a long time.

------
zihotki
I wonder how is that comparable to contaminations due to a natural volcanic
eruption. I bet the numbers will be several times bigger for volcano.

~~~
godelski
Only radioactive contaminants. But that's really just my guess, I don't know
as much about volcanoes. As far as I'm aware, there usually aren't big
radiation deposits around volcanoes. But as far as total contaminants it
depends on the size of the volcano.

From quick searching I can get some numbers [0]. Yearly volcanoes produce
>200m tons of CO2 (not sure if that is CO2eq, because volcanoes also produce a
lot of CH4, SO2, H2O,H2S, and other greenhouse gases). A quick search doesn't
yield anything conclusive. But I can tell you I've worked on shielding tech
and my intuition is that a volcano is going to produce a lot more. This might
be a good place for acidburnNSA[1] to chime in, as they know substantially
more than I do.

[0] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-
volcan...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-
humans/)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=acidburnNSA](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=acidburnNSA)

------
lstodd
Remember:

The shorter the half-life of an isotope is, the more radioactive and thus
dangerous it is.

The longer the half-life of an isotope is, the less radioactive and thus
dangerous it is.

Fukushima happened in 2011, almost 8 years ago.

Almost everything dangerous had since decayed.

What we can detect long-living and thus not-so-dangerous isotopos, or detect
minute traces of short-living ones because we have very sensitive equipment
means exactly nothing besides the fact that we can.

~~~
mehrdadn
> The shorter the half-life of an isotope is, the more radioactive and thus
> dangerous it is.

> The longer the half-life of an isotope is, the less radioactive and thus
> dangerous it is.

> Fukushima happened in 2011, almost 8 years ago. Almost everything dangerous
> had since decayed.

Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,100 years and is pretty dangerous AFAIK
[1]:

> Radioactive contaminants are dangerous for 10 to 20 times the length of
> their half-lives, meaning that dangerous plutonium released to the
> environment today will stick around for the next half a million years.

[1] [https://www.livescience.com/33127-plutonium-more-
dangerous-u...](https://www.livescience.com/33127-plutonium-more-dangerous-
uranium.html)

~~~
erobbins
Yeah, even longer lived things that decay via alpha particles are dangerous
when ingested... high energy atomic nuclei hitting DNA makes for bad juju.

~~~
lstodd
Of which Radon-222 and Radon-226 still are way more threat than some reactor
blowing up somewhere.

edit: if you've got granite in the basement, be vefy afraid :)

