Surface pathway of radioactive plume of TEPCO Fukushima NPP1 released 134Cs and 137Cs

THIS IS A SCIENTIFIC PAPER --Some definitions

134 AND 137 Cs are isotopes of Cesium.  Cesium has a half life of 30 years. It takes about ten half lives to lose toxicity, or about 300 years.  Plumes of cesium are making their way slowly across the Pacific Ocean to North America. Contrary to some of the reporting in the mass media cesium does not dilute into the oceans and fall to the seafloor but rather stays just under the surface and in condensed plumes. Sea life swims through these plumes and uptakes the cesium particles. When smaller life forms (krill, etc.) are eaten by bigger life forms the cesium begins to condense. Eventually this makes its way into the food chain since fish spawn, get eaten by bears and other wildlife on the land surface which deposit it onto the soils through elimination and decay upon death. The particles then either sink into the ground polluting the fresh water or are blown about by the wind spreading cesium particles over an ever widening area. The cesium now being released into the atmosphere will be here for many generations. After the Fukushima explosions cesium with the Fukushima signature was discovered in France. We should not take this lightly.  Cesium is very toxic.

40N is the 40th parallel North. The Pacific Northwest is centered around the 45th parallel North and California is roughly between the 34th and 40th parallel North.  This plume crossing the ocean will eventually separate into two currents. One working north to Alaska, the other branching south to Southern California. These currents will then rotate toward each other carrying this cesium up and down the coast and eventually down to the equator where it will loop back around to the Asiatic region. Dilution out of these plumes will take decades. 

Argo floats are a series of 3606 robotic floats that measure the temperature, salinity and other factors of the oceans. These floats rise and fall in the ocean in a ten day cycle. 

The International Date Line is not quite halfway across the Pacific and is not a straight line as it maneuvers around land masses in the Pacific.  These plumes reached the Date Line March 2012.  From here it will take approximately one and a half years to reach the North American continent and will arrive spring 2014. 


Surface pathway of radioactive plume of TEPCO Fukushima NPP1 released 134Cs and 137Cs

Abstract. 134Cs and 137Cs were released to the North Pacific
Ocean by two major likely pathways, direct discharge
from the Fukushima NPP1 accident site and atmospheric deposition off Honshu Islands of Japan, east and northeast of
the site. High density observations of 134Cs and 137Cs in
the surface water were carried out by 17 cruises of cargo
ships and several research vessel cruises from March 2011
till March 2012. The main body of radioactive surface plume
of which activity exceeded 10 Bqm−3 travelled along 40 N
and reached the International Date Line on March 2012, one
year after the accident. A distinct feature of the radioactive
plume was that it stayed confined along 40 N when the
plume reached the International Date Line. A zonal speed
of the radioactive plume was estimated to be about 8 cm s−1
which was consistent with zonal speeds derived by Argo

floats at the region.

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