Ken Buesseler is Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod. He specializes in natural and manmade radionuclides in the ocean. First he worked on fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, then on the impacts of the Chernobyl explosion on the Black Sea. Most recently he examined radionuclide contaminants in the Pacific ocean after the melt downs of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants.
Within weeks of the accident Buesseler managed to charter and equip a research vessel that arrived off the coast of Japan in June of 2011 to take the first ocean measurements. And you are about to hear his report from that scientific venture and his follow-up.
The most shocking result in those first weeks was that the level of radioactive Cesium in the water off Fukushima had risen from 1 1/2 BQ per cubic meter to 15 and later to an unprecedented 100 million Bq per cubic meter.
The research team also found that, even though the levels of radioactive isotopes have come down in the past year, they did not return to pre accident levels. Buesseler says it also shows that there is a constant inflow of new radioactivity from the ruined nuclear plant itself and also from the ground water and rivers that flow into the ocean through the contaminated land of the Fukushima province. As of March 2013 radiation in water near the plant was still a thousand time higher than it once was.
Ken Buesseler was recorded by Pacifica Radio on March 11, 2013, at the two day Fukushima Symposium, organized by the Helen Caldicott Foundation, and co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)
