Dr. Conca indicates that the speakers at the annual Ocean Sciences Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Honolulu in late February said ocean water containing dissolved radionuclides from the Fukushima crippled nuclear reactors have reached the northern west coast of North America.
The scientific community found it interesting in an academic way. Some folks in the non-scientific community were quite worried. However, the amount of Fukushima radioactivity in this seawater is miniscule, about a Becquerel per cubic meter of water, or Bq/m3 of short-lived Cs-134, and poses no concern at all. And never will. By comparison, the EPA drinking water standard for its sister radionuclide, Cs-137, is about 7,400 Bq/m3, and for all radioactive materials is almost a million Bq/m3.
But since we can now see a single atom disintegrating, we can detect this trace amount of radioactivity easily, way better than we can detect toxic compounds like mercury. This Fukushima rad-signature has already taken its seat alongside that left over from above-ground nuclear tests in the 1950s and 60s as a curious and interesting phenomenon we can use scientifically to track water and air circulation patterns, and to use in forensic oceanography.
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