Nuclear Radioactivity is spreading its damage, even if only in minute doses, and in unexpected ways.
We live in a vastly complex and interwoven set of Ecosystems. Taken together they form the One Earth -- that Humanity calls Home.
Sadly we are finding that Home is much smaller than most of us may have realized.
When Nuclear Waste starts spreading its Radioactivity, there's no telling where it might end.
One -- it spreads by Sky ...
... by Sky ...
TSUNAMI NUCLEAR FALLOUT HITS UK
By Nathan Rao, dailyexpress.co.uk -- Wednesday March 30,2011
Radioactive iodine was found in air samples taken in Oxfordshire, Glasgow and Dublin.
Officials insisted the amount was “extremely low” but the traces came from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, 5,500 miles away, which was crippled when the magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan nearly three weeks ago.
[...]
Meteorologists say radioactive atoms would have been carried across the Pacific Ocean, the USA and the Atlantic before arriving in Britain.
Dr John Large, who oversaw the salvage of the Russian submarine Kursk – and has visited the Fukushima plant – said: “The International Commission on Radiological Protection – which is made up of government agencies -- is quite clear. It says any increase in accumulated radiation dose exposure is accompanied by a proportionate increase in risk. That is the natural law.
Two -- it spreads by Sea ...
Fukushima: Sea contamination likely to be local - scientists
By Richard Ingham (AFP) -- March 29, 2011
PARIS — Radioactive contamination of the sea from Fukushima is likely to be only a local problem, but could lead to an exclusion zone if there is a major release of long-term pollutants, scientists say.
So far, the biggest contaminant identified by Japanese officials has been Radioactive iodine 131.
[...]
Radioactive iodine can enter the marine food chain, especially through seaweed, which absorbs this element readily.
"There is the potential, when you're talking about certain types of seafood, that you can have reconcentration," said Ed Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a respected US NGO that focuses on nuclear safety.
"So, even dilute levels of contamination can be enhanced in certain marine life, you know, just like mercury concentrates in large fish like tuna. Also, plants like seaweed are known to concentrate certain isotopes, and so are certain types of shellfish."
[...]
Given the scale of the Pacific -- the world's vastest body of water -- radioactivity in the sea at Fukushima will be flushed out beyond the local area by tides and currents and dilute to very low levels, Boxall said [Simon Boxall, a lecturer at Britain's National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton]
"It will get into the (ocean) food chain but only in that vicinity," he said. "Should people in Hawaii and California be concerned? The answer is no."
Three -- Nuclear Waste spreads by Land ...
Fukushima's Fallout
The Windsor Star -- March 29, 2011
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration isn't taking any chances. Last week it announced all milk and produce coming from four areas near Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant would be blocked at the border.
Hong Kong went further, banning milk, vegetables, meat and seafood from an even wider region
[...]
And Canada? The Canada Food Inspection Agency is still accepting products from the suspect areas, putting the onus on exporters to swear to their safety.
And Four, it was only a matter of time before,
that poisonous Nuclear Waste spread it damage into other more intangible realms -- like those of History, Tradition, and even Human Livelihoods ...
Plight of Fukushima farmers takes its toll
By Michiyo Nakamoto, FT.com in Tokyo -- March 29 2011
For many years, Hisashi Tarukawa used to worry about the nuclear power plant 70 kilometres away from his farm in Sukagawa, Fukushima prefecture.
The 64-year-old Fukushima native, who tended his ancestral land after graduating from the local agricultural high school, knew that some day radioactive substances would leak from the plant, contaminating his farm and destroying his livelihood.
[...]
"When that happened, my father knew that it meant he would no longer be able to grow things here,” recalls Kazuya Tarukawa, 35, his son. “He was strongly opposed to the plant and warned something like this would happen. He said his homeland might disappear,” the younger Mr Tarukawa says wistfully.
For the older farmer, the thought was apparently too much to bear. On the morning of March 24, Mr Tarukawa committed suicide by hanging himself.
That is One painful story. A pain that is all too Human. That often occurs when all Hope is lost. When there is no way forward, to be had.
Sadly, MORE such Fukushima Fallout pain is yet to be endured; it's only just beginning ... the spreading of the Human Fallout.
Such tragic losses, will no doubt continue, as an agonizing Untallied Cost of Fukushima's ever-spreading Nuclear Fallout. Until it stops; and one day reverses.
Whether that Fallout is ultimately measured in staggering terms of Economic GNP ... or perchance, in terms of those individual Livelihoods, forever changed, too, by a tasteless, colorless, toxic dust --
-- That Fallout will continue to spread its damage, across those dozens of interwoven Ecosystems, which Taken together -- form our One Planet Earth --
The sum of which, is a complex, fragile Environment, that Humanity hopes fervently, to one day still be able to call ... Our safe and secure Home.
The winds of fate, willing, of course.