Fisherman from the “Kiyomaru” fishing boat pull in their net as they sail off the Iwaki town south of crippled Daiichi nuclear power plant, Fukushima prefecture September 20, 2013. Only a small part of the boat’s catch will be used to test for radioactive contamination in the waters near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility, while the rest will be thrown back into the ocean. (REUTERS/Damir Sagolj)
March 11 will mark the five-year anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, a series of nuclear meltdowns, triggered by a devastating earthquake-induced tsunami, that released massive amounts of radioactive material and resulted in the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Since then, the plant’s damaged drainage system has continued to leak radioactive water into the environment, and one of the biggest enduring public concerns has been the safety of fish caught in the area’s surrounding waters.
Miro is a trained truffle dog that belongs to Simon Egli, a co-author of the Biogeosciences paper based at Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL. He’s pictured here with a Burgundy truffle he found in Switzerland. Credit: Simon Egli, WSL
by European Geosciences Union EurekAlert
Published 25 Feb 2016
Some forest mushrooms, such as wild porcini, can accumulate dangerous levels of radioactivity from the soils they grow in. But until now it was unclear if the same was true for truffles, fungi that range among the most expensive foods in the world. Swiss and German researchers have analysed Burgundy truffles collected in central Europe and found they contain only negligible amounts of radioactive caesium, being safe for consumption. The results are published today (25 February) in Biogeosciences, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
Shells of sea snails (Thais clavigera); one of the organisms missing from near the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant
The purpose of this post is to report on a newly published, peer-reviewed study in the open access journal Scientific Reports that uses field observations to determine how intertidal species abundance and diversity were affected by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) disaster. This post is part of an ongoing series dedicated to summarizing the results of scientific studies aimed at understanding the impact of the FDNPP disaster on ecosystem and public health. Horiguchi and colleagues surveyed intertidal marine organisms and made measurements of artificial radionuclides in specimens in 2011, 2012 and 2013. They found that in 2012 the number of intertidal organisms was lower closer to the FDNPP than farther away and that the sea snail (Thais clavigera) was absent from sampling locations <30 km from the FDNPP. Because sea snails were found in other rocky habitats affected by the tsunami in 2011 the absence of these organisms in 2012 near the plant might be related to the FDNPP disaster. In 2013 both the numbers of organisms and diversity of species were found to be lower at sites within several kilometers south of the FDNPP site. While, according to the authors, there is no clear explanation for the findings at present it is clear that the intertidal biota has been impacted close to the FDNPP since the disaster. The authors conclude that:
it is unlikely that the tsunami was solely responsible for changes in the intertidal communities given the distribution of sea snails
other causes might include acute or sub-acute toxicities from the largest leaks from the FDNPP site in March-April 2011 containing artificial radionuclides, boric acid and hydrazine (and other chemicals)
most significant impacts to the intertidal community occurred along the coast south and proximal to FDNPP which likely reflects predominant local water currents
The changes noted by Horiguchi and colleagues in the intertidal community contrast with the lack of significant changes in benthic organisms along the Japanese coast by Sohtome and colleagues that was summarized here.
The purpose of this diary is to report the most recent results of Kelp Watch 2015, a program dedicated to monitoring for Fukushima derived contamination along the Pacific Coast of North America. New results from the fourth sampling period (May 4 through June 10 2015) were released on Dec. 8, 2015 and can be found here. As with previously reported results here, here, here and here no radioactive isotopes from Fukushima were detected in kelp growing at sampling sites along our Pacific coast. The absence of 134Cs in kelp suggests that ocean transport of Fukushima contamination had yet to reach persistently high enough levels in North American coastal water to bioaccumulate in kelp. The scientific community expects that levels of contamination rise in coastal waters as predicted by measurements and models in the coming year Kelp Watch 2015 will help to track the arrival of the plume in time and space. Continue reading KelpWatch 2015 Monitoring: No Fukushima derived contamination May – June ’15→
Third-year science students H. Onodera and R. Suzuki, both 18, and second-year students M. Saito, Y. Fujiwara, both 17, and S. Anzai, 16 and their supervising teacher T. Hara, 57, took part in compiling the study. They used citizen science deployed dosimeters to compare external radiation dose experience by students in different countries.
The purpose of this post to report on a peer-reviewed, open access study published in the Journal of Radiological Protection where high-school aged citizen scientists measured and compared the external ionizing radiation doses experienced by students in Japan, Belarus, France, and Poland. Adachi and colleagues equipped 216 high-school students in Japan (inside and outside Fukushima Prefecture), Belarus, France and Poland with an electronic dosimeter to estimate and compare annual external ionizing radiation doses in 2014. The distribution of doses experienced in each region overlapped with each other indicating that personal external ionizing radiation exposure in Fukushima Prefecture and Belarus are within the range of annual doses from terrestrial background radiation in other locations.
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