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  • 2013-08-27 (xsd:date)
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  • Fukushima Radioactive Water Leak Chart (en)
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  • The massive (8.9) Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011 resulted in a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns and releases of radioactive materials from the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, the largest nuclear disaster since the catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine in April 1986. In August 2013, news accounts quoted an official from Japan's Nuclear Regulatory Authority as stating that highly radioactive water was seeping from the plant into the Pacific Ocean and creating an emergency situation that the plant's operators were not adequately containing: References to these news accounts were widely circulated on the Internet accompanied by a color graphic supposedly showing the flow of radioactive discharge from Fukushima all the way across the Pacific Ocean to the western coasts of North and South America and down to Antarctica: However, that chart did not actually track or measure radioactive discharge emanating from Fukushima in 2013, or any other aspect of the Fukushima disaster. It was a plot created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) immediately after the Tohoku earthquake in March 2011 showing the wave height of the tsunami that followed. It had (and has) nothing to do with the flow or spread of radioactive seepage from Fukushima. As for whether the current Fukushima emergency poses a danger to residents of the U.S., American officials have stated that the diluting effects of the vast Pacific Ocean expanse would likely neutralize any deleterious effects from the radioactive seepage by the time it reached U.S. shores: Likewise, the Hawaii State Department of Health has been monitoring Japanese water quality surveys and anticipates no public health effect in that state due to leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant: (Similar false image fears were spurred by the Internet circulation of a nuclear fallout map back in March 2011.) In December 2013, alarmist reports were spread on the Internet with headlines such as TEPCO Quietly Admits Reactor 3 Could Be Melting Down Now! and Persons residing on the west coast of North America should IMMEDIATELY begin preparing for another possible onslaught of dangerous atmospheric radiation! Such claims were exaggerations based on much less sensational reports (similar to ones issued several months earlier) which simply stated that the plant's operators, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), had recently observed steam issuing from one of the damaged Fukushima reactor buildings but had not identified [any] abnormal plant conditions. As noted at the Fukushima Diary blog: (en)
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