It's official: radioactive material from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has been found on B.C.'s coast.
Also official: it's very unlikely to hurt you.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution(WHOI) found traces of cesium-134 and cesium-137 in Ucluelet on Vancouver Island on Feb. 19, it said in a Monday news release. The Cape Cod, Mass.-based non-profit spent 15 months scanning for radioactive isotopes at more than 60 sites along the west coast and Hawaii.
The Vancouver Island sample contained 1.4 Becquerels per cubic metre (Bq/m3) of cesium-134, which WHOI concluded came from Fukushima after the 2011 earthquake that led to a series of meltdowns at the facility.
The sample also contained 5.8 Bq/m3 of cesium-137, which likely came from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing.
WHOI said that if someone were to swim six hours per day for a whole year in water that had twice that amount of cesium, the radiation would still be more than 1,000 times lower than what one experiences during a dental X-ray.
In short, it falls well below levels that could threaten humans or sea life.
That's mostly wrong. The background from nuclear weapons testing is currently at 1.2 Bq/m³, so the other 4.6 came from Fukushima.The sample also contained 5.8 Bq/m3 of cesium-137, which likely came from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing.
Ken Buessler, the researcher who leads the Woods Hole monitoring program, said he expects more of the monitoring sites to show detectable levels of cesium-134 in coming months. However, the amounts of cesium-134 and cesium-137 in the B.C. sample were extremely low — just 1.4 and 5.8 becquerels per cubic metre of water respectively. Canada allows up to 10,000 becquerels of cesium-137 per cubic metre in drinking water.
"Today's report is not alarming at all. It's kind of to be expected," he said.
The Woods Hole researchers tested water taken on February 19 dotted throughout the coast of Ucluelet, British Columbia, a small town on Vancouver Island. The researchers detected cesium-134 at levels of 1.4 Becquerels per cubic meter, and cesium-137 at levels of 5.8 Becquerels per cubic meter.
The becquerel is the derived unit of radioactivity in the International System(IS). It is a way to measure radiation levels. Following the Fukushima disaster, Japanese coastal waters contained 50 million Becquerels per cubic meter.
Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans reports that the Pacific Ocean harbors about 1 percent cesium-137 levels of nearly one Becquerel per cubic meter. The radiation levels near Ucluelet were nearly six times higher.