We have observed fallout from the recent Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor accident in samples of rainwater collected in the San Francisco Bay area. Gamma ray spectra measured from these samples show clear evidence of fission products--(131,132)I, (132)Te, and (134,137)Cs. The activity levels we have measured for these isotopes are very low and pose no health risk to the public.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3177818 | PMC |
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0024330 | PLOS |
Ecotoxicol Environ Saf
December 2024
Institute of Radiation Emergency Medicine, Hirosaki University, 66-1 Honcho, Hirosaki, Aomori 036-8564, Japan.
The radiation dose reduction factor represents a building's shielding capability against radiation in scenarios of potential nuclear accidents. Notably, the radiation dose reduction for school buildings and gymnasiums have not yet been determined, even though the building types are planned to be used as evaluation shelters in Japan. This study evaluated dose reduction factors in relation to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRadiat Prot Dosimetry
November 2024
Institute of Radiation Emergency Medicine, Hirosaki University, Hirosaki, Aomori 036-8564, Japan.
The concentration of the radioactive cesium (134Cs and 137Cs) in soils and in atmospheric fallouts has been measured at the Koriyama campus, Nihon University, after the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident for 13 y, from October 2011 till September 2023 and now ongoing. The concentration of them decreased very rapidly due to decontamination activities and weathering effects, with an environmental half-life of 1.21 and 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Sci Technol
July 2024
Xi'an AMS Center, State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of AMS Technology and Application, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi'an 710061, China.
As the number of coastal nuclear facilities rapidly increases and the wastewater from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant has been discharged into the Pacific Ocean, the nuclear environmental safety of China's marginal seas is gaining increased attention along with the heightened potential risk of nuclear accidents. However, insufficient work limits our understanding of the impact of human nuclear activities on the Yellow Sea (YS) and the assessment of their environmental process. This study first reports the I and I records of posthuman nuclear activities in the two YS sediments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
June 2024
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE-IPSL), UMR 8212 (CEA/CNRS/UVSQ), Université Paris-Saclay, CEA Saclay - l'Orme des Merisiers, 91191, Gif-Sur-Yvette, France.
Cs is a long-lived man-made radionuclide introduced in the environment worldwide at the early beginning of the nuclear Era during atmospheric nuclear testing's followed by the civil use of nuclear energy. Atmospheric fallout deposition of this major artificial radionuclide was reconstructed at the scale of French large river basins since 1945, and trajectories in French nuclearized rivers were established using sediment coring. Our results show that Cs contents in sediments of the studied rivers display a large spatial and temporal variability in response to the various anthropogenic pressures exerted on their catchment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Environ Radioact
July 2024
Laboratory for Environmental Research at Mount Fuji, Okubo Shinjyuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Electronic address:
Plutonium, as well as fission products such as Cs, had been released into the earth environment in 1945 after the first atmospheric nuclear explosion of plutonium bomb in the desert of New Mexico (USA, July 16) and later over Nagasaki (August 9), followed then by many other explosions. Thus, plutonium cycling in the atmosphere and ocean has become a major public concern as a result of the radiological and chemical toxicity of plutonium. However, plutonium isotopes and Cs are important transient tracers of biogeochemical and physical processes in the environment, respectively.
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