Radioactive waste found on beach in CA, USA

At first I thought this was related to Fukashima, but upon reading further it sounds like there was lots of stuff there already. Does anyone have any insight to add to this? Could it be because of radioactive material making it's way here from Japan? Am I naive to think that that would be the cause? I was just looking for a little more info if anyone here knows anything about it... or feel free to speculate too.

Navy spokesman Lee Saunders said officials can't yet put a numerical figure on the amount of radioactivity present. "We're still studying it. We're trying to characterize it," he said. These areas were used by the Navy from the 1940s to the late 1980s. The military was poised to start a cleanup of 4,080 cubic yards of soil where other contaminants were known to be present, including diesel, jet propellant, gasoline, transformer fluids containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and sand blast grit, which contains metals and poly aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The finding of radioactive material has halted that work for now. The public has never had access to the site, Saunders said. The Navy is taking steps to guard against the excavated material becoming airborne by storing it in covered stockpiles within fenced areas.

hisz.rsoe.hu...

reply to post by Ellie Sagan

It may have been there all along, but Fukushima definitely doesn't help

Well, it says they found the radioactive material near a beach not on a beach
so.. This can't be from japan..

reply to post by sarahlm


If it was there before, where would it have come from do you think?

One thing you can keep your eyes on is the debris field heading for the west cost
of the united states.. Lots of radioactive junk from Japan floating on the surface of
the ocean .. There was a ball that washed up not long ago ..was from japan..
Do a search..... It's insane how much stuff is floating... They have picks of it from
airplanes...and projection path of the junk blob.

reply to post by Firethefed


I don't think I'd be too happy living on the west coast right now. Everything on Earth is connected so I guess it doesn't matter where we live. Well I guess this has been going on for some time though. I feel so bad for Mother Earth.

reply to post by Ellie Sagan


It's a no public access military landing area for planes and such. Who know what the military spilled on the ground out there...but I'm sure it's stuff they spilled on the ground..

As part of that training, the Navy used fuels to ignite aircraft hulls, which contained various types of radioactive materials.

It sounds like a reasonable explanation to me.

reply to post by Zarniwoop


I guess what tripped me up is the fact that they said the radioactive stuff they found halted their cleanup efforts already underway. If they already knew it was from the aircraft, then it seems to me they would have already accounted for the cleanup procedures necessary for that. The fact that they had to stop the efforts implies that it was unexpected radioactive waste.

From what I can find, it sounds like low radioactive levels are fairly common from the paint used on the self-luminous aircraft instruments. So, the should have expected it, but probably didn't think about it until it showed up and someone had an "oh yeah" moment.

reply to post by Zarniwoop


Oh that does sound feasible. Thanks for your responses.