You can see here that one of the main plankton currents includes the sea around Japan. This current extends to Alaska, Canada and California. Plankton are the base of the oceanic food chain. The whales and dolphins are at the top. In the North Pacific there are 300 species of fish, including salmon and sardines.
What might happen to the plankton and other creatures in the food chain if someone poured 12,000 tons of highly radioactive water from a nuclear facility into the sea? The answer must be - for this initial deposit of 12,000 tons, in the absence of any Plan B will be followed by a second 12,000 tons and so on - that there will exist the potential for a plankton food chain catastrophe.
Water weighs 1 tonne per m³. The quantity, to visualize it, is going to be (by my reckoning) 12,000 m³ . What does 12,000m³ look like? Imagine a swimming pool 12kms long x 1m deep x 1 m wide. That's about the size of it.
Now, in addition to this vast quantity of 'swimming pool' radiation the sea is, we have been told, continually being polluted with radioactive water escaping through undetected cracks and also from clouds of radioactive particles falling into it; and has been for more than 3 weeks.
This problem without a solution in sight must have implications beyond the mere demise of the Japanese sushi industry. Surely the unfolding situation now goes far beyond even Chernobyl, however the Japanese Government, TEPCO, the IAEA and other interested parties like to downplay it.
Simply put. Humankind's greed is killing the planet.
images: Wiki
Humankind has been killing the planet for the past century.
ReplyDeleteIt is now becoming visable
enough for us humans to finally take notice, and start getting nervous. Is it too late?
I see today in the Times that they are actually dumping radio active water into the sea off Japan now.
ReplyDeleteThank you Richard. I'm sorry for the Japanese but I can't understand why their government allowed these reactors to be built in an unstable tectonic area. I can't understand why a small country like Japan wants to be the 3rd or 4th in the league tables and has ambitions to be a great industrial nation. They had a beautiful land, a wonderful sea, and now for the sake of industrial ambition they've thrown it away.
ReplyDeletePat, the currents will bring radioactive poison to the filter feeders the mussels and shellfish etc. along those beaches in both directions for hundreds of kilometers. When the plant's pools are full they'll have to empty them again, if it doesn't explode all over the place first.
Not so sure we're talking about a "swimming pool" any longer. More like a cesspool.
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