Cesium-137 Deposition Simulation Shows Extensive Ocean Contamination Even in Japan Sea

I wrote on Monday November 14 about the paper by the international team of scientists on cesium-137 deposition simulation after the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident, from March 20 to April 19.

In the English paper that I linked, there was a map of cesium-137 deposition simulation in much wider area of Japan, which I showed in the post.

But then, in the press release by Nagoya University (one of the scientists is from this university), I realized I should have linked the different map of cesium-137 deposition simulation on land and on the ocean. A whole lot of radioactive materials may have fallen on the ocean, the Pacific Ocean AND the Japan Sea. (Remember, this is a simulation map, not the actual measurement.)

Looking at the map, I don't think I want to eat anything from the Pacific Ocean. Or the Japan Sea. Abalone fishing just started in Iwate Prefecture.

By the way, the paper and the researchers were criticized heavily on Twitter a couple of days ago (it still continues) from other researchers in Japan. Their beef was that the researchers of the paper withheld this information from the public when it could have made the difference in determining the government policy or in alerting more people on the possibility of much wider radiation contamination. Instead, the researchers waited for the peer review in the very prestigious scientific venue (the National Academy of Sciences of the United States) to be finished and the paper published. Some say the researchers had the temerity to say in their Nagoya University press release on November 15, "We request that the information in the paper not be used to spread a new set of "baseless rumors" [on the contamination]."

Well, as we have seen, they are not alone. There have been a lot of Japanese researchers who have done what they just did, announcing what could have been the vital information after their papers got accepted by foreign peer-reviewed magazines. I personally know one, whose radiation survey result in locations in Fukushima might have made a significant difference. But the researcher is still sitting on the data (though he was careless enough to put it on his website for a long time), because his paper is being peer-reviewed.

But then there are researchers like Professor Yukio Hayakawa of Gunma University, who released the radiation contour map he created soon after the accident, to much ridicule from the establishment initially. And Professor Bin Mori of Tokyo University, who published his world-first discovery of bio-concentration of radioactive silver in spider on his personal blog, and allowed me to spread the information both in Japanese and in English so that more people know about it as soon as possible.

Well, Professors Hayakawa and Mori have the professorship, and these researchers do not. Still it is too bad that they had to put their careers before the welfare of the population in Japan.

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