Citizen's Group Undertakes Pacific Ocean Monitoring [View all]

[RobertEarl]

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is setting up dozens of seawater sampling sites along the western coast of North America. A website, OurRadioactiveOcean.org, is the place to go to help with financing and to get results. Some results are already listed on the site.

In some samples the level of Cesium-134 has been detected, (2011) and Cesium-137 is detectable, its concentration is about 1.3 Bq per cubic meters. That Cesium-137 concentration is nearly the same level that was found after atomic bomb testing in the 1950's. Meaning that levels have not gone down in 50 years.

One sample taken in 2011, shortly after the Fukushima plants blew up, found Cesium 134, which is a signature of recent reactions, off the coast of S. California in April of 2011. That trace material came from fallout and not via the water plume.

This sampling now is setting the base conditions for detecting the coming plume via seawater, which is due to come ashore any day according to modelling.