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Record cesium level detected in fish caught near Fukushima nuclear plant
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/16/national/record-cesium-level-detected-in-fish-caught-near-fukushima-nuclear-plant/#.UURft-1qP8sTokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday it detected a record 740,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in a fish caught in waters near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, equivalent to 7,400 times the state-set limit deemed safe for human consumption.
The greenling measuring 38 cm in length and weighing 564 grams was caught near a water intake of the four reactor units in the power station’s port on Feb. 21 during the utility’s operation to remove fish from the port.
Tepco has installed a net on the sea floor of the port exit in Fukushima Prefecture to make it hard for fish living near the sediments of contaminated soil to go elsewhere.
According to Tepco, the previous record of cesium concentration in fish was 510,000 Bq/kg detected in another greenling captured in the same area. Currently, fishermen are voluntarily suspending operations off the coast of the prefecture except for experimental catches.
17 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
First of all, I'm surprised you've accepted anything that is published in SA. As I recall you ridiculed anything published in SA saying something along the lines of it being nothing like real science.
There's nothing wrong with SA. It's just not a prestigious peer-reviewed journal. It's mass-market pulp reporting on scientific subjects. It doesn't add credibility to Jacobsen, but it's fine for reporting things that are going on in the field. The point wasn't to validate some argument, just to document that in fact tuna are being studied and levels are going down... not up.
SA's reporting actually says that tuna spawn and feed in Japanese coastal waters for about a year. 5 months after the disaster, they found Cs in the muscle of tuna off California
And that fits just what I said. They aren't hanging around in one area (as the greenlings) feeding on one source that might be contaminated. In order for bioaccumulation to occur (that is, to find levels in some top-of-the-food-chain animals that would appear more dangerous that the virtually nonexistent levels in the water), the animals have to spend time eating other animals that are themselves hanging around some food source that remains more highly contaminated. Tuna simply don't fit that model.
That information means that your claim is pure conjecture at best. If those tuna were found only 5 months after the disaster, then they hardly represent the normal levels of tuna that will feed there for their first full year of life.
Except that tuna aren't bottom feeders and the contamination levels offshore have dropped too far for there to be any significant additional accumulation. Nor were the ones from five months after the disaster the last tuna to be measured. The disaster was now two years ago, so there certainly have been fish that fed in Japanese coastal waters for the first year of their lives. In fact, the young tuna this year were almost the only ones that they could detect Fukushima cesium in (with Cs134 levels usually under 1 bq/kg)
Additionally, since they were exposed in Japanese waters shortly after the disaster, it means contamination levels in their food supply probably had not had time to reach anywhere near the levels we are now seeing.
Which explains the falling contamination levels in the tuna.
There's nothing wrong with SA. It's just not a prestigious peer-reviewed journal. It's mass-market pulp reporting on scientific subjects. It doesn't add credibility to Jacobsen, but it's fine for reporting things that are going on in the field. The point wasn't to validate some argument, just to document that in fact tuna are being studied and levels are going down... not up.
SA's reporting actually says that tuna spawn and feed in Japanese coastal waters for about a year. 5 months after the disaster, they found Cs in the muscle of tuna off California
And that fits just what I said. They aren't hanging around in one area (as the greenlings) feeding on one source that might be contaminated. In order for bioaccumulation to occur (that is, to find levels in some top-of-the-food-chain animals that would appear more dangerous that the virtually nonexistent levels in the water), the animals have to spend time eating other animals that are themselves hanging around some food source that remains more highly contaminated. Tuna simply don't fit that model.
That information means that your claim is pure conjecture at best. If those tuna were found only 5 months after the disaster, then they hardly represent the normal levels of tuna that will feed there for their first full year of life.
Except that tuna aren't bottom feeders and the contamination levels offshore have dropped too far for there to be any significant additional accumulation. Nor were the ones from five months after the disaster the last tuna to be measured. The disaster was now two years ago, so there certainly have been fish that fed in Japanese coastal waters for the first year of their lives. In fact, the young tuna this year were almost the only ones that they could detect Fukushima cesium in (with Cs134 levels usually under 1 bq/kg)
Additionally, since they were exposed in Japanese waters shortly after the disaster, it means contamination levels in their food supply probably had not had time to reach anywhere near the levels we are now seeing.
Which explains the falling contamination levels in the tuna.
