The 2011 nuclear reactor meltdown in Fukushima Japan continues unresolved despite the fact that governmental authorities and major news media have assured their constituencies the situation has been contained.
The continued dumping of extremely radioactive cooling water into the Pacific Ocean from the destroyed nuclear plant is already being detected along the Japanese coastline, and has the potential to impact entire portions of the Pacific Ocean and North America’s western shoreline.
“This water contains plutonium 239 and its release into the ocean has both local as well as global repercussions,” writes Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research. “A microgram of plutonium if inhaled, according to Dr. Helen Caldicott, can cause death.”
While recognizing that the water in remaining tanks at the Fukushima facility is heavily “tainted,” a December 2014 statement from the Japanese government’s Nuclear Radiation Authority affirms a decision to dump the highly radioactive water into the Pacific.
Aside from the potential release of plutonium into the Pacific Ocean, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the utility in charge of the Fukushima plant, recently admitted that the facility is releasing a whopping 150 billion becquerels of tritium and seven billion becquerels of cesium and strontium contaminated water into the ocean every day. In contrast, the Japanese government does not allow over 100 becquerels per kilogram to be sold to its citizenry.
Sources:
“TEPCO Drops Bombshell About Sea Releases; 8 Billion Bq Per Day,” Simply Info: The Fukushima Project, August 26, 2014, http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=13700.
Michel Chossudovsky, “The Fukushima Endgame: The Radioactive Contamination of the Pacific Ocean,” Global Research, December 17, 2014, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-fukushima-endgame/5420188
Student Researcher: Cassie Kahant (Florida Atlantic University)
Faculty Evaluator: James F. Tracy (Florida Atlantic University)