Chris Busby explains impact of radioactive water on Fukushima coast

Nevertheless, the sea-to-land effect is real. And anyone living within 1km of the coast to at least 200km north or south of Fukushima should get out. They should evacuate inland. It is not eating the fish and shellfish that gets you – it’s breathing.

Pump and pray: Tepco might have to pour water on Fukushima wreckage forever, Science Alert, CHRISTOPHER BUSBY, 19 Aug 13, “………But I want to make two other points. The first is that the Pacific Ocean is big enough for this level of release not to represent the global catastrophe that some are predicting. Let’s get some scoping perspective on this. The volume of the North Pacific is 300 million cubic kilometers. The total inventory of the four Fukushima Daiichi reactors, including their spent fuel pools, is 732 tons of Uranium and Plutonium fuel which is largely insoluble in sea water. The inventory in terms of the medium half-life nuclides of radiological significance Cs-137, Cs-134 and Strontium-90, is 3 x 1018 becquerels (Bq) each. Adding these up gives about 1019 Bq. If we dissolve that entire amount into the Pacific, we get a mean concentration of 33 Bq per cubic meter – not great, but not lethal. Of course this is ridiculous since the catastrophe released less than 1017 Bq of these combined nuclides and even if all of this ends up in the sea (which it may do), the overall dilution will result in a concentration of 1 Bq per cubic meter. So the people in California can relax. In fact, the contamination of California and indeed the rest of the planet from the global weapons test fallout of 1959-1962 was far worse, and resulted in the cancer epidemic which began in 1980. The atmospheric megaton explosions drove the radioactivity into the stratosphere and the rain brought it back to earth to get into the milk, the food, the air, and our children’s bones. Kennedy and Kruschev called a halt in 1963, saving millions.

What we have here in Fukushima is more local, but still very deadly and certainly worse than Chernobyl since the populations are so large. And this brings me to my second point, and a warning to the Japanese people. The contamination of the sea results in adsorption of the radionuclides by the sand and silt on the coast and river estuaries. The east coast of Japan, the sediment and sand on the shores, will now be horribly radioactive.

This material is re-suspended into the air through a process called sea-to-land transfer. The coastal air they inhale is laden with radioactive particles. I know about this since I was asked in 1998 by the Irish State to carry out a two-year study of the cancer effects of releases into the Irish Sea by the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield. We looked at small area data leaked to us by the Welsh Cancer Registry covering the period of 1974-1989, when Sellafield was releasing significant amounts of radio-Caesium, radio-Strontium, and Plutonium. Results showed a remarkable and sharp 30 per cent increase in cancer rates in those living within 1km of the coast. The effect was very local and dropped away sharply at 2km. In trying to discover the cause, we came across measurements made by the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment. Using special cloth filters, they had measured Plutonium in the air by distance from the contaminated coast. The trend was the same as the cancer trend, increasing sharply in the 1km strip near the coast. We later examined cancer rates in a higher resolution questionnaire study in Carlingford, Ireland. This clearly showed the effect increasing inside the 1km radius in the same way. The results were never published in scientific literature but were presented to the UK CERRIE committee and eventually made it into a book which I wrote in 2007 entitled, “Wolves of Water.” Make no mistake, this is a deadly effect. By 2003, we had found 20-fold excess risk of leukemia and brain tumours in the population of children on the north Wales coast. The children were denied of course by the Welsh Cancer Intelligence Unit that supplanted the old Welsh Cancer Registry – which had been shut down immediately after the data was released to us. We did publish this in scientific literature.

August 21, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Fukushima 2013, Japan, oceans, Reference

4 Comments »

I’m confused about the numbers Dr. Busby gives.

1. He says “…Cs-137, Cs-134 and Strontium-90, is 3 x 1018 becquerels (Bq) each. Adding these up gives about 1019 Bq”

How can 1018 X 3 Bq = 1019 Bq

2. In addition, other reports have said:

(a) Fukushima released Trillions of Bq of Tritium into the ocean;
(b) seaweed alone has been found with 40,000,000 Bq per Kilogram in it;
(c) cesium levels released by Fukushima into the ocean are said to be 3,500 times that of atomic testing;
(d) cesium levels in fish were found at 80 X higher than prior to Fukushima
(e) Woods Hole Oceanographic Socierty found cesium-137 in seawater was 50 million times higher than before the meltdowns
(f) 62TBq (terabecquerel = trillion Becquerel) of radioactive strontium is reported to have been released into the Pacific Ocean from the meltdowns

Therefore upon reviewing the above, I am confused by Dr. Busby’s numbers.

Can anyone clarify Dr. Busby’s analysis? I’m sure I’m not the only one confused by it.

Thank you.

Comment by Dee | August 21, 2013 | Reply
- 3 x 10^18, times 3 is about 20^19. how did you miss that?
  
  Comment by Brian | October 8, 2013 | Reply
Mr Busby assumes homogenous distribution when many research institutes are reporting pockets of high radiactivity-which may explain why some fish, plant life, and soil samples, have high emissions.

How would varying degrees of concentration affect the conclusions of his research

Comment by david taylor | August 22, 2013 | Reply
I think you need to read e.g. “1018” as “10^18” i.e. “ten to the power of 18”. It will make a lot more sense then.

I agree with comment 2. Busby assumes that radioactive substances will disperse uniformly through the Pacific Ocean, which due to ocean currents may not be true for a very long time, during which areas of quite high radioactivity may exist. People on the West Coast from Alaska to Mexico should be monitoring the ocean to see what the actual situation is.

Comment by Tony Boys | August 22, 2013 | Reply