During last year’s nuclear disaster, the deadly radiation inside Fukushima 1 became one with the surrounding environment contaminating everything. Things aren’t getting any better. Record quantities of the deadly radioactive isotope cesium-137 have just been discovered in the fisheries around Fukushima.
We’ve known about the untold and nearly inconceivable quantities of cesium-137 released into the surrounding ecosystem for over a year. But these numbers reported by the AFP are still shocking:
The fishes, captured 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) off the plant on August 1, registered 25,800 becquerels of caesium per kilo, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said — 258 times the level the government deems safe for consumption. The previous record in fish and shellfish off Fukushima was 18,700 becquerels per kilo detected in cherry salmons, according to the government’s Fisheries Agency.
Authorities had hoped things were getting better, and as the AFP reports, they allowed fishermen to get back to work for a trial run as long as they were more than 31 miles from the disaster site and stuck to shellfish. So far the experimental catches have proven (relatively) clean. Still, while everyone in the region is understandably eager to get back to normal, but let’s hope the wishful thinking doesn’t get out of hand.