Newspaper: Strontium-90 from Fukushima found along west coast of N. America — “Plutonium… might be in the plume” — Scientist: There needs to be more monitoring… No sign radioactive releases from plant are going to stop

Thursday, August 28, 2014
By Paul Martin

ENENews.com
August 28th, 2014

Haida Gwaii Observer (BC, Canada), Jan 7, 2014:

A scientist at the University of Victoria is trying to find… residents who’d like to submit samples to be tested for radiation
Professor Jay Cullen said a plume of radioactive material from Japan was tracked across the Pacific and arrived off the west coast of North America last June
“As of 2013, (it was) detected inshore along Vancouver Island,” Dr. Cullen said
Several radioactive materials have been found, with Cesium 137 the most potentially problematic
He said off Vancouver Island, a measurement of [Cesium 137 found] .009 Becquerels per litre [9 Bq/m³]
The plume also contains other radioactive material, including 90 at a far, far lower level than was released into the atmosphere during the nuclear bomb testing
Low levels of plutonium and tritium might be in the plume
There is no sign the release is going to stop, Dr. Cullen said
He said he thinks there needs to be more monitoring, especially since the radioactive discharge will continue

Jordi Vives i Batlle, Radioecologist at Belgian Nuclear Research Centre: The Fukushima accident is the only major nuclear accident that has resulted in the direct discharge of radioactive materials into a coastal environment… Radionuclides can also become biologically concentrated. There is ample evidence of this for I, Cs, Pu, and Am in many species of marine biota… Cs will tend to accumulate in fish… Pu and Am will tend to accumulate in benthic crustaceans and mollusks… potentially protracted times of elimination after the initial influx of radioactivity has dispersed from the area [should be accounted for]… irregular pulses of radioactivity [may have been released into] the marine environment [and] ambient concentrations could vary rapidly… Conservative screening approaches based on equilibrium concentration factors may therefore be inadequate. Such a situation calls for… models that are capable of calculating time-integrated dose for a pulsed release of radioactivity… Little is known regarding long-term effect to entire populations, a limitation that is unlikely to be resolved in the near future… accidental radiological releases pose particular challenges to the evaluation or impact in marine ecosystems [such as] scarcity of data from previous accidents, and another is the scarcity or information on how radiation affects interconnected populations of marine biota. Yet another challenge is the dynamic nature of the possible releases… the complexity of the marine environment [has] potential for local concentration and long-range dispersion.

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