Oceanic plume of radioactivity predicted
to reach US by 2014
From: JEREMY HSU, LIVESCIENCE.COM via Discovery News in ENN.com
A radioactive plume of
water in the Pacific Ocean from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, which was
crippled in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, will likely reach U.S. coastal
waters starting in 2014, according to a new study.
The long journey of the
radioactive particles could help researchers better understand how the ocean’s
currents circulate around the world.
Ocean simulations showed
that the plume of radioactive cesium-137 released by the Fukushima disaster in
2011 could begin flowing into U.S. coastal waters starting in early 2014 and
peak in 2016.
"The environmental
impact could have been worse if the contaminated water would have been released
in another oceanic environment in which the circulation was less energetic and
turbulent," said Vincent Rossi, an oceanographer and postdoctoral research
fellow at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems in
Spain.
Fukushima's radioactive
water release has taken its time journeying across the Pacific. By comparison,
atmospheric radiation from the Fukushima plant began reaching the U.S. West
Coast within just days of the disaster back in 2011.
Photo credit
ral.ucar.edu
Read more at Discovery News.
