Remember Fukushima? Earthquake? Tsunami? Nuclear meltdown? Happened back in ’75, if I recall correctly.

Still going on.

Scientists confirmed the arrival of radioactive Fukushima water at the annual American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu today, but pointed out that the concentrations of the two isotopes were still well below safe drinking levels. Researchers from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography have been continuously sampling water off the coast of Vancouver, British Columbia, since 2011. “These levels are still well below maximum permissible concentrations in drinking water in Canada for caesium-137 of 10,000 becquerels per cubic metre of water — so, it’s clearly not an environmental or human-health radiological threat,” Bedford’s Dr. John Smith told BBC News…
By Charles P. Pierce
Remember Fukushima? Earthquake? Tsunami? Nuclear meltdown? Happened back in ’75, if I recall correctly.

Still going on.

Scientists confirmed the arrival of radioactive Fukushima water at the annual American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu today, but pointed out that the concentrations of the two isotopes were still well below safe drinking levels. Researchers from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography have been continuously sampling water off the coast of Vancouver, British Columbia, since 2011. “These levels are still well below maximum permissible concentrations in drinking water in Canada for caesium-137 of 10,000 becquerels per cubic metre of water — so, it’s clearly not an environmental or human-health radiological threat,” Bedford’s Dr. John Smith told BBC News.
Did they throw a parade? OK, so there’s nothing to worry about there, top scientists tell us. Except that the consummately incompetent bullshit artists managing this debacle at its source are still at it.

The utility known as Tepco said the levels were undercounted due to errors in its testing of beta radiation, which includes strontium-90, an isotope linked to bone cancer. None of the samples were taken from seawater, the company said today in an e-mailed statement. “These errors occurred during a time when the number of the samplings rapidly increased as the result of a series of events since last April, including groundwater reservoir leakage and a major leak from a storage tank,” according to the statement. It will run new tests of the samples taken from April to September 2013 and will publish corrected beta radiation readings. Outside experts were being sought in Japan and internationally to cross-check analysis results and review Tepco’s measurement methods, the company said.
It’s well past time for us to stop taking TEPCO’s word for anything in this regard. The manifest bungling and obvious mendacity has demolished the credibility of almost anything almost anybody says about the consequences of this disaster, and that includes the top scientists in British Columbia who are telling the people there not to worry about the fact that the incoming tide is glowing a lovely green these days.