Radioactive contamination of Japanese beaches may deter swimmers during summer tourist season

NHK World of Japan reports that officials of Ibaraki Prefecture, south of the catastrophically leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, have begun radiation monitoring on 17 beaches. They hope to quell the fears of swimmers, surfers, and other visitors ahead of the vital summer tourist season. It has long been known that "radioactive stigma effect" -- not only after catastrophes, but even after smaller accidents or even during "routine" nuclear activities -- can harm other economic sectors, especially ones like agriculture and tourism, over entire regions. Clean, safe, and ever more reliable and cost effective wind turbines, on the other hand, have been shown to attract tourists!

"Radiation under ground and in the sky, animals and birds who live nearby are dying"

40 years ago, Marvin Gaye was a wee bit ahead of the curve when he wrote his environmental anthem "Mercy Mercy Me (the Ecology)," released as the #2 track on his What's Going On album. "Mercy Mercy Me" was released on June 10, 1971, and shot to the top of the charts, becoming one of Gaye's most popular songs:

"Woo ah, mercy mercy me
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east
Woo mercy, mercy me, mercy father
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no
Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas, fish full of mercury
Ah oh mercy, mercy me
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no
Radiation under ground and in the sky
Animals and birds who live nearby are dying
Oh mercy, mercy me
Ah things ain't what they used to be
What about this overcrowded land
How much more abuse from man can she stand?
Oh, na na...
My sweet Lord... No
My Lord... My sweet Lord"

Although Gaye's reference to radiation almost certainly alluded to nuclear weapons testing, it certainly resonates still, given what's happening at Fukushima Daiichi, as well as commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe (Tim Mousseau's ornithological studies in the Chernobyl Dead Zone show that indeed, "animals and birds who live nearby are dying"), not to mention "Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas" from the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster a year ago, and "fish full of mercury" from the continued burning of coal.

Fukushima's "impacts on the ocean will exceed those of Chernobyl"

As quoted in the article by Elizabeth Grossman in the entry below:

“Given that the Fukushima nuclear power plant is on the ocean, and with leaks and runoff directly to the ocean, the impacts on the ocean will exceed those of Chernobyl, which was hundreds of miles from any sea,” said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist in marine chemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “My biggest concern is the lack of information. We still don’t know the whole range of radioactive compounds that have been released into the ocean, nor do we know their distribution. We have a few data points from the Japanese — all close to the coast — but to understand the full impact, including for fisheries, we need broader surveys and scientific study of the area.”

Given this need for more scientific data, why is the Obama administration EPA, NOAA, and FDA discontinuing emergency radiation monitoring set up after the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe began -- especially considering the radioactive releases into the ocean are continuing as we speak?!

"Radioactivity in the Ocean: Diluted, But Far from Harmless"

Elizabeth Grossman's article on environment360 looks to previous ocean dumping of radioactivity -- as by the Soviets in the Kara and Barents Seas, and by the British in the Irish Sea -- for insights to help understand the potential impacts of Fukushima Daiichi's unprecedented oceanic discharges of radioactivity. Grossman reports. She points out that radioactivity, although diluted in the vast ocean, will re-concentrate up the food chain. "A 1999 study found that seals and porpoises in the Irish Sea concentrated radioactive cesium by a factor of 300 relative to its concentration in seawater, and a factor of 3 to 4 compared to the fish they ate," she reports. That radioactive contamination flowed from the U.K.'s Sellafield reprocessing plant. Just this morning, Obama administration Energy Secretary Steven Chu advocated a resumption of U.S. reprocessing for the first time since 1972. Which body of water he intends to turn into a nuclear sacrifice zone, however, he didn't mention.

"Marine life soaking up radiation along Fukushima coast"

As described in a Greenpeace blog, as well as covered at The Raw Story, Greenpeace International radiation monitoring teams off the Fukushima Prefecture coastline have detected radioactivity in edible seaweed -- a staple in Japan, and commonly consumed internationally as well -- 50 times the permissible level (which itself should not be misconstrued as being "safe," as any exposure to radioactivity, even at exceedingly low doses, still carries a health risk). In addition, Greenpeace detected radioactive contamination above permissible levels in multiple species of edible fish, as well as shellfish. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been releasing large-scale amounts of radioactively contaminated water for many weeks on end, right up to the present as yet another new leak was just reported yesterday. All this bad news comes amidst Tokyo Electric Power Company's belated admission that the Unit 1, 2, and 3 reactors have all suffered melt downs. It took Tepco 11 weeks to admit this, even though the meltdowns likely began (at Unit 1, anyways) even before the tsunami hit, and had resulted in perhaps 100% meltdowns of the Units 1, 2, and 3 cores in the first few days of this catastrophe.