Fukushima radiation found off Calif. coast
By Jacob Adelman, Bloomberg
Oceanographers have detected isotopes linked to Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant off California’s coast, though at levels far below those that could pose a measurable health risk.
Volunteer ocean monitors collected the samples that tested positive for trace amounts of the isotope cesium-134 about 100 miles west of Eureka, the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said this week on its website.
Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, which released “unprecedented levels” of radioactivity during the March 2011 accident, was the only conceivable source of the detected isotopes, Woods Hole oceanographer Ken Buesseler said in the release.