The clean-up is proceeding slowly, amid warnings that some towns could be uninhabitable for three decades. Edge talked to reactor inspectors, Fukushima residents and nuclear scientists in the Japanese government to piece together Inside Japan's Nuclear Meltdown, which premieres at 10 p.m. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes around the plant and swathes of this zone remain badly polluted. Radiation was scattered over a large area and made its way into the sea, air and food chain in the weeks and months after the disaster. The Fukushima Daiichi plant, 220 kilometers (135 miles) northeast of Tokyo was crippled by meltdowns and explosions after the quake and tsunami, which killed more than 19,000 people. The study, "Canopy-Forming Kelps as California's Coastal Dosimeter: 131I from Damaged Japanese Reactor Measured in Macrocystis pyrifera," appears in the online edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology. "Although it is probably not harmful for humans because it was relatively low levels, it may have affected certain fish that graze on the tissue because fish have a thyroid system that utilizes iodine." Manley, author of the study with Christopher G. TOKYO Japan’s nuclear crisis verged toward catastrophe on Tuesday after an explosion damaged the vessel containing the nuclear core at one reactor and a fire at another. The disaster prompted a wave of public anger and a move away from nuclear power in Japan In 2012, Japans then prime minister Yoshihiko Noda said the state shared the blame for the disaster. FILE - The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant sits in coastal towns of both. "We measured significant, although most likely non-harmful levels of radioactive iodine in tissue of the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera," said Steven L. Japan Nuclear Watchdog Ask Fukushima Plant Operator to Assess Risk From Reactor Damage. It was already known that radioactive iodine 131 (131-I), carried in the atmosphere, made it across the Pacific within days of the Matsunami disaster, albeit in minuscule amounts.īut marine biologists at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) discovered the radioactive isotope in ocean kelp, which is "one of the strongest plant accumulators of iodine," within a month of the accident.
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