Radiation leaked by the damaged Japanese nuclear power plant in Fukushima has been found at an increasing number of sites off the US West Coast, a group monitoring the contamination says. One sample collected west of San Francisco displayed the highest level to date.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was crippled during the March 2011 quake and tsunami, releasing high amounts of radiation-poisoned water into the environment. Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), was among the first scientists who started monitoring radiation leaks in the wake of the disaster.
The latest finds from Buesseler and his team include 110 new samples of seawater collected in the Pacific and reported on the Our Radioactive Ocean website. The scientists confirmed that radiation from Fukushima is present in previously unidentified locations, although the levels are currently too low to threaten human or aquatic life.
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