Japan: record high radiation levels found in Fukushima fish, more than a year after nuclear accident

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) in Japan said Tuesday its monitoring efforts have recorded record high radiation levels in local seafood: 25,800 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in fish sampled within a 20-kilometer range of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The photo shows fish caught Aug. 1, 2012 within 20 kilometers of the crippled nuclear power plant. The findings indicate that radioactive contamination remains at unsafe levels in the area's food supply more than a year after the nuclear crisis.

From Kyodo News:

The level of cesium found in greenling is 258 times that deemed safe for consumption by the Japanese government, suggesting that radioactive contamination remains serious more than a year after the nuclear crisis.

Fishing in the sea off Fukushima Prefecture is voluntarily restricted except for trial fishing of certain octopuses.

CNN has more.

• [fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

  TEPCO is delighted to announce that Japan’s future nuclear efforts can now be sustained entirely by renewable biofuels harvested from the oceans of the world!

• [Boundegar]

  Well fishies, the good news is, no more Nets of Doom swooping down from on high.  The bad news is, you have three heads.

• [zotlerg]

  At 258 times the safety limit and a half-life of 30 years, that makes it safe in over 240 years from now?! 

  • [OldBrownSquirrel]

     That’s true if you assume it’s all Cs-137.  If it’s all Cs-134, it will be safe in about 16 years; if it’s all Cs-135, it will be safe in about 18 million years.

    Really, we need to know the isotope ratios to make such extrapolations.

    • [zotlerg]

      Would it be difficult to find out? I might do that when I have the time. Still, 16 years, that’s horrible enough.
      After a year it should have spread out to sea, or maybe the count was incredibly high back then. Does it stick around?

      • [zotlerg]

        It’s cs-137:
        http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/04/682.html

• [miasm]

  It’ll be fiiiiiiine. *waves hand

• [Joe Giambrone]

  So are we allowed to complain yet?  I love the arbitrary “20km” distinction.  As-if.

  The nuclear industry is a crime against humanity.  Nuclear apologists should be forced to live in Fukushima,with their families.  Until they do, perhaps you’d be better off getting the facts about radiation and what it does to children.

  • [Pag]

    For every person killed by nuclear, 4000 die due to coal electricity generation http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/03/the-triumph-of-coal-marketing.html Do you also consider the coal industry a crime against humanity, or do you reserve that judgment  to nuclear because it’s scarier?

    • [Joe Giambrone]

      This is a completely made up BS statistic.  Disregard it.

      I consider clean renewables the most moral alternative.  I don’t argue in favor of clearly immoral behavior, as many technocrats hereaabouts seem to do.

      As for the cheap “facts” comments below, did you check the sources the article is based on?  Did you follow the citations to their sources?  

      Didn’t think so.

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        As for the cheap “facts” comments below, did you check the sources the article is based on?

        You might have offered us primary sources, which are generally preferred.

  • [Guest]

    deleted

    • [Forced2Register]

      In Italy we banned nuclear energy: 94.5% voted to make it illegal.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    I’m not sure that an article written by you on a site called scoop.co is the first place that I would look for “the facts.”

    • [miasm]

      I have to ask, you seem like you might know. Where ARE “the facts”?

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        Sadly, it’s vastly easier to identify “not the facts” than “the facts”.

• [Nagurski]

  Hello Blinky.

• [Coal Miki-Restall]

  But I thought TEPCO weren’t to be trusted for the facts. As it’s them that reported this finding, it seems reasonable to assume it isn’t true, and that everything is perfectly alright.

  • [toyg]

    No, the reasonable assumption is that they’re reporting a fraction of the truth — throughout the entire ordeal, they never lied, they just “omitted” some facts here and there. So there’s probably something they don’t say — I suspect it is that the 20km limit is bogus.

• [Marios P.]

  what did you think? That radiation will evaporate and disappear?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Radioactive decay?

    • [Marios P.]

      sure.
      how long?