ABSTRACT

The March 11, 2011 earthquake in Japan and the subsequent tsunami damaged and disrupted cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility. Contamination of land and seas surrounding the site, as well as food supplies and drinking water, is being reported. Small but measurable quantities of radioactivity have been detected in the atmosphere over the US, including aerosol samples collected at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where I-131 was seen to increase to detectable levels as of March 21-22, and is continuing to increase.

With funding through this Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID), investigators at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will establish a baseline radionuclide data set for the Atlantic and Pacific using an east to west network of sampling stations where they have the ability to sample regularly. The sites where the principal investigator has thus far made contact and has arrangements for sampling assistance include: Bermuda, WHOI, Santa Barbara Channel, Hawaii, Midway, Guam, and closer to the site in collaboration with Japanese scientists.

Intellectual Merit: Establishing early activities after an accidental release of man-made radionuclides is key to understanding both the magnitude of the release and public health issues, as well as setting the stage for the use of the longer lived radionuclides as tracers in subsequent studies by the community to understand ocean processes. To put the total potential Fukushima Daiichi source in perspective, all of the atmospheric weapons testing in the 1950?s and 60?s released 36 million Curies of Cs-137, Chernobyl 1-3 million Curies, and Three Mile Island only 10 Curies. At Fukushima, the potential source of Cs-137 in the reactor cores is 67 million Curies and 180 million Curies in the spent fuel ponds.

Broader Impacts: Data collected during this project will be shared with the larger community at both scientific meetings and deposited in appropriate data bases (WHOI BCO-DMO and IAEA Global Marine Radioactivity Database (GLOMARD)). The sampling network can be used to inform policy makers of radioactivity levels to consider for fisheries and human health. Collaboration with the Japanese is important to the success of this effort for both access to data and sampling in coastal waters, and the WHOI team will build upon existing relationships with JAMSTEC established under prior NSF funding (VERTIGO project). They will also include other Japanese universities and national labs that are monitoring radionuclides in air, land and oceans, as well as share data with the broader international community. In addition to building international relationships, the collaboration with H. Dulaiova at U. Hawaii will serve to mentor junior faculty and students at a U.S. university. The PI has already helped develop a web site at WHOI in response to the Japanese crisis and had several interviews with the media (web, print, TV). Public outreach is important as anxieties over radioactivity run high, and these results need to be put in context of natural sources of radiation, the scales and pathways of exposure and relative risks to society.