Radiation from Japan nuclear disaster spreads off U.S. shores (Yahoo News)

PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - Radiation from Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster has spread off North American shores and contamination is increasing at previously identified sites, although levels are still too low to threaten human or ocean life, scientists said on Thursday.

Tests of hundreds of samples of Pacific Ocean water confirmed that Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant continues to leak radioactive isotopes more than four years after its meltdown, said Ken Buesseler, marine radiochemist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

...

"Despite the fact that the levels of contamination off our shores remain well below government-established safety limits for human health or to marine life, the changing values underscore the need to more closely monitor contamination levels across the Pacific," Buesseler said in an email.
Radiation from Japan nuclear disaster spreads off U.S. shores

Since many readers of the Japan forum demand MSM sources for everything, the above should suffice.

Getting back to the topic, who can be surprised by the news that "contamination is increasing"?

They're measuring for cesium-134 and cesium-137. Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years. Isn't it obvious that it will keep accumulating for many years to come?

"Wherever there's radiation cesium, there's going to be plutonium." - Arnie Gunderson

The quote above is from the following source:

Ground Zero: Japan Speaking Tour No. 2

a reply to: Profusion

Your article seems to be about 6 months old. Yes. There are several ongoing monitoring programs. A couple crowd sourced. After 5 years, very low levels of cesium have been detected.
ourradioactiveocean.org...
kelpwatch.berkeley.edu...


But the part about plutonium, that's talking about the Fukushima region, right?
What is "radiation cesium?"

Good thing I did my crab pig out a few summers back with the lummi. Still felt strangely ominous and unknown then.

still leaking though
cant we pack all this stuff up via drones, pop em onto a rocket, and shoot it into the sun?! ...like..serious question actually. (would suck if the rocket exploded going up though).

Do we (civilization) have a better backup plan now in the event of the next nuclear disaster?
Also, if we are seeing issues in the US, is the entire Japanese shore screwed?

a reply to: SaturnFX

My rough calculation suggests one space shuttle per week could keep up with production of high level waste worldwide.

To get rid of the entire backlog would need hundreds of huge rockets.

We can't safely bury it or shoot it into space.

I'm not up to date on this. Have the coriums been located yet?

a reply to: Kester
Shuttles just put it in Earth orbit though. Probably not an optimal solution.

Takes a big boost to get it to fall into the Sun.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Kester
Shuttles just put it in Earth orbit though. Probably not an optimal solution.

Takes a big boost to get it to fall into the Sun.

suddenly this makes sense:
Japanese company plans space elevator by 2050

This needs to happen for many reasons.

a reply to: Phage

I was thinking more of carrying capacity than ultimate destination. Personally I think the Sun seems a bit too near and important. Perhaps just put it in a line of trucks and drive them off the edge of the flat Earth.

a reply to: SaturnFX
Ooh. There are "safety" issues with that too.

But again. Getting garbage into Earth orbit just means more garbage there and there is quite enough as it is.

originally posted by: SaturnFX
still leaking though
cant we pack all this stuff up via drones, pop em onto a rocket, and shoot it into the sun?! ...like..serious question actually. (would suck if the rocket exploded going up though).

Do we (civilization) have a better backup plan now in the event of the next nuclear disaster?
Also, if we are seeing issues in the US, is the entire Japanese shore screwed?

Do you realize how many containers of radioactive water they have stored on site? Its ridiculous! Do the math. If currently we cant send people to Mars, there is NO way to send radioactive waste into the Sun.

originally posted by: Kratos40

originally posted by: SaturnFX
still leaking though
cant we pack all this stuff up via drones, pop em onto a rocket, and shoot it into the sun?! ...like..serious question actually. (would suck if the rocket exploded going up though).

Do we (civilization) have a better backup plan now in the event of the next nuclear disaster?
Also, if we are seeing issues in the US, is the entire Japanese shore screwed?

Do you realize how many containers of radioactive water they have stored on site? Its ridiculous! Do the math. If currently we cant send people to Mars, there is NO way to send radioactive waste into the Sun.

See space elevator link I posted...could be a thing.

a reply to: SaturnFX
It might be a good idea, in that case, to have one entirely dedicated to the transport of waste to orbit.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: SaturnFX
It might be a good idea, in that case, to have one entirely dedicated to the transport of waste to orbit.

I imagine in a hundred years, intersolar waste disposal will be a normal industry like any other. great lead cubes full of radioactive muck toted up, perhaps a solar sail or some inexpensive propulsion system put on and shot into space. And yeah, eventually elevators specifically for removal will no doubt be created.

I think this should be the new focus for international space cooperation. a couple space elevators specifically to clean up the ground. who knows, might even be able to hit Chernobyl area effectively.

There has to be some obvious reason why this isn't being undertaken already by global governments..this seems achievable and kind of important..not to mention all the benefits from having a space elevator to begin with

a reply to: SaturnFX
As long as we're being hopeful, hopefully we won't be producing fission products in 100 years.

not to mention all the benefits from having a space elevator to begin with

As I said, there are also risks. Imagine a 10,000 mile "beanstalk" composed of unobtainium crashing. Someone (Niven?) wrote a story quite a while back about terrorists chopping down such a beanstalk. The results were not pretty.

originally posted by: Phage
As I said, there are also risks. Imagine a 10,000 mile "beanstalk" composed of unobtainium crashing. Someone (Niven?) wrote a story quite a while back about terrorists chopping down such a beanstalk. The results were not pretty.

If a piece of space junk severs the cable in orbit and the cable comes crashing down, yes that's a big risk as it could do a lot of damage. That seems like a bigger risk than a terrorist threat since most terrorist organizations don't have the resources to send an accurate enough rocket into space to sever the cable. North Korea might have such an accurate missile capability by the time the space elevator is built (if it is ever built, that is), but even though they seem a bit nutty I don't think they are suicidal and for them to commit such an attack I think would be suicide for their country/government.

Terrorists with less resources could try to sever the cable at the ground, but not much would happen if they succeeded, the cable would just drift upward without doing any real damage to the Earth. If they try to fly a hijacked plane into the cable at 9 miles altitude that could potentially drop 9 miles of cable (more likely to just slice the plane into pieces given the required properties of the unobtanium), but again the other 10,000+ miles would go up, not down, so it's a 9 mile cable problem not a 10000+ mile problem. I would expect there to be a "no-fly" zone around the cable, and for hijacked planes violating that to be shot down before hitting the cable.

The following link is a bit confusing with the point-counterpoint format, but it says more or less the same thing I was thinking, that the threat of space junk is probably worse then the threat of terrorists. Some of the engineering proposals I've read for "flying" the cable around to avoid space junk collisions sound almost as difficult as engineering the unobtanium.

Space Elevator Terrorism

originally posted by: SaturnFX
I imagine in a hundred years, intersolar waste disposal will be a normal industry like any other. great lead cubes full of radioactive muck toted up, perhaps a solar sail or some inexpensive propulsion system put on and shot into space. And yeah, eventually elevators specifically for removal will no doubt be created.

For disposing of nuclear waste, we've already removed the "waste" or excess uranium from the Earth's natural nuclear reactor in Oklo, so, is removing radioactive material from Oklo then putting radioactive material back in Oklo so bad? We wouldn't need a space elevator to do it. Some people forget or didn't know that Oklo had a nuclear reactor billions of years before humans existed and the leftovers from that natural reactor don't seem to have had any negative effects on us that I'm aware of.

Nature's Nuclear Reactors

at the Gabon reactors many of the radioactive products of the nuclear fission have been safely contained for two billion years, providing evidence that long-term geologic storage of nuclear waste is feasible.