Home » Posts tagged 'bering strait'

Tag Archives: bering strait

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Radioactive Fukushima Particles Found In Alaska’s Bering Strait

April 1, 2019

Radioactive Fukushima Particles Found In Alaska’s Bering Strait

Radioactive particles from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have drifted as far north as a remote Alaskan island in the Bering Strait, according to scientists at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. 

Seawater collected last year near St. Lawrence Island contained a slight elevation in levels of cesium-137, a man-made radioactive isotope formed during nuclear fission. 

According to Reuters, the levels of cesium found in Alaska are far too low to pose a health hazard – as humans have been “cleared” to consume levels some 3,000-times higher than those found in the Bering Sea, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Water was sampled for several years by Eddie Ungott, a resident of Gambell village on the northwestern tip of St. Lawrence Island. The island, though part of the state of Alaska, is physically closer to Russia than to the Alaska mainland, and residents are mostly Siberian Yupik with relatives in Russia.

Fukushima-linked radionuclides have been found as far away as Pacific waters off the U.S. West Coast, British Columbia and in the Gulf of Alaska.

Until the most recent St. Lawrence Island sample was tested by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the only other known sign of Fukushima radiation in the Bering Sea was detected in 2014 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. –Reuters

In 2014, trace-amounts of Fukushima radiation was found in the muscle tissue of fur seals on Alaska’s St. Paul Island in the southern Bering sea, however there was no testing of the water at the time, according to Gay Sheffield, a Sea Grant marine advisory agent based in Nome, Alaska. 

Three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant melted down in March 2011 after a 9.0-magnitude quake and subsequent tsunami knocked out the plant’s backup generators, disabling the pumps required to cool the reactors. 

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress