More than three years after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident in Japan, questions remain about how much radioactive material has been released and how widely and quickly it is dispersing across the Pacific Ocean. Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) are partnering with coastal communities from southern California to Alaska to collect seawater samples and raise funds for analyses that provide the latest information about radiation levels in the ocean. Join Ken Buesseler, marine chemist and director of the Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity at WHOI for an update on what is known about radioactivity levels in the Pacific Ocean. We will also discuss how Alaskans can get involved in monitoring radiation levels through a unique collaboration between citizens and scientists to collect and analyze seawater.
This call is presented by ACAT’s Alaska Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE-Alaska).
Featured speaker:
Ken Buesseler, director of the Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts where he specializes as a senior scientist in the study of natural and manmade radioactive isotopes in the ocean. Buesseler began sampling and analyzing seawater surrounding the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant three months after the disaster. In January 2014, he launched a crowd sourcing campaign and citizen science website to collect and analyze seawater along the West Coast of North America as the radioactive plume travels 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean. All of the data is being published on the website, How Radioactive is Our Ocean?
The call lasted for one hour and was recorded for archival purposes.