March 11, 2014 marks the three-year anniversary of the disaster in Fukushima, Japan. At 2:46 pm UTC, a 9.0 earthquake shook Japan and spawned a 30-foot tsunami that destroyed their northeastern coast and inundated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant.
The tsunami damage caused four reactors to explode and three to meltdown. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company in charge of the power plant, used various methods to attempt to “clean up” the disaster without success.
“[Fukushima] will never be completely cleaned up. Nuclear disasters create devastation that can never be reversed”, said Marylia Kelly, executive director of Tri Valley CARES (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) a nuclear weapon watchdog organization based in Livermore, Calif.
According to Kelly, once radioactive waste is emitted into the atmosphere via air or water, the impact on human health does not decline over time or space— rather, it spreads its effects over a larger area.
In 2011, traceable levels of radioactive materials were found in Bluefin Tuna off the coast of California. Earlier this year, Loki Fish Company found trace levels of Cesium 137 in their Wild Alaskan Salmon.
In September 2013, the Food and Drug Administration said: “[We have] no evidence that radionuclides from the Fukushima incident are present in the U.S. food supply at levels that would pose a public health concern.”
They have yet to publish these results.
Consequently, public health and safety concerns regarding radioactive effects on the West coast populations of North America has increased due to the lack of published empirical scientific studies.
Fortunately, a team of 40 plus researchers have collaborated to independently and transparently study the radioactive waste transport from Japan to the North American West coast.
Dr. Kai Vetter,head of the applied nuclear physics program at the University of California at Berkeley and staff physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley national laboratory, has teamed up with Dr. Steven L. Manley, from the Department of Biological Sciences, at Cal State University Long Beach to launch “Kelp Watch 2014”. The program is designed to determine the extent of possible radionuclide contamination (primarily Cesium-137 and-134) of our kelp forest ecosystem from seawater arriving from Fukushima.
Starting today, a total of 42 populations will be sampled three times over the next nine months and include test sites ranging from Alaska, down the West coast of North America to Chile.
Scientists hypothesize that the potential health risks of the radiation are extremely low. “The amount of radiation attributed from Fukushima will be small and smaller than the dose we are exposed to on daily basis.” said Vetter, but while admitting, “ the low dose effects of radioactive waste exposure on humans is not yet well understood”. This study aims to further understand those effects.
In addition to Kelp testing, research teams at Berkeley will continue measure radioactive levels in fish, shells, seaweed, air and plan to publish their results.
To get involved with Nuclear disarmament and “clean up”, please visit www.trivalleycares.org and to find concrete, scientific facts regarding radioactive material on the West Coast, please visit www.radwatch.berkeley.edu.