FUKUSHIMA: Pacific Ocean Will Not Dilute Radioactive Water

The operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has been dumping something like a thousand tons per day of radioactive water into the Pacific ocean. Remember, the reactors are riddled with meltdown holes, building 4 with more radiation than all nuclear bombs ever dropped or tested, is missing entire walld, and building 3 is a pile of rubble. The whole complex is leaking like a sieve, and the rivers of water pumped into the reactors every day are just pouring into the ocean, with only a slight delay. Most people assume that the ocean will dilute the radiation from Fukushima enough that any radiation reaching the West Coast of the US will be low. Scientists have stated that radiation in the ocean very quickly becomes diluted and would not be a problem beyond the coast of Japan. US fisheries are unlikely to be affected, because radioactive material that enters the marine environment would be gratly diluted before reaching US fishing grounds. A Woods Hole oceanographer said: The Kuroshio current is considered like the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, a very large current that can rapidly carry the radioactivity into the interior of the ocean, Buesseler said. But it also dilutes along the way, casing a lot of mixing and decreasing radioactivity as it moves offshore. But just as we noted 2 days after the earthquake hit that the jet stream might carry radiation to the US by wind. We are now warning that ocean currents might carry more radiation to at least some portions of the West Coast of North America than is assumed: The floating debris will likely be carried by currents off Japan toward Washington, Oregon and California before turning toward Hawaii and back again toward Asia, said Curt Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle oceanographer who spent decades tracking flotsam!