A fisherman collects seaweed in the Pacific Ocean near Katsuura city, Chiba province, south of Fukushima. Levels of radiation pouring into the ocean from the Fukushima reactor site are causing concern among local fisheries and fears that the radiation will affect the food chain and impact on Japanese coastal fisheries. Picture: EPA

By Harvey Wasserman
26 May 2011 New readings show levels of radioisotopes found up to 30 kilometers offshore from the on-going crisis at Fukushima are ten times higher than those measured in the Baltic and Black Seas during Chernobyl. “When it comes to the oceans, says Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceonographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, “the impact of Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl.” The news comes amidst a tsunami of devastating revelations about the Fukushima disaster and the crumbling future of atomic power, along with a critical Senate funding vote today:  … The health impacts on workers at Fukushima are certain to be devastating. … David Brenner, the director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center, said of the workers:  “Those are pretty brave people. There are going to be some martyrs among them’.” “I don’t know of any other way to say it, but this is like suicide fighters in a war,” said University of Tokyo radiology professor Keiichi Nakaga. Unfortunately, the toll among Fukushima’s workers is certain to escalate.  As few as two in five being sent into the Fukushima complex are being monitored for radiation exposure.  According the Mainichi Shimbun, just 1,400 workers at Fukushima had been given thorough checkups, with just 40 getting their results confirmed.

Is Fukushima now ten Chernobyls into the sea?