Café Thorium

Despite some wavy weather and a rolling ship, the Twilight Zone team aboard the Spanish research vessel Samiento de Gamboa has been pushing through and collecting data and samples daily. Here you can follow the team of scientists, engineers, and students as they put some of the most advanced research tools available to the challenge…

It has been 10 years since the accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plants in Japan, and worries still abound. Read this opinion piece by Ken Buesseler: 10 Years After Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Meltdown, I’m Still Worried | Opinion Nearly 10 years ago, I boarded a flight from Boston to Tokyo, filled with anxiety.…

PLEASE JOIN US Thursday March 4th For the 10th anniversary of the accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear Power Plant we will be hosting a live discussion in both Japanese and English. There will be a virtual poster session and interactive questions. Please see the website for more information, FREE registration

A fresh look at seawater stored in tanks on the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant site indicates that more research and analyses are needed prior to releasing the water back to the ocean. Nearly 10 years after the Tohoku-oki earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant and triggered an unprecedented release radioactivity…

Surfrider is a non-profit foundation dedicated to the protectoin and enjoyment of the world’s ocean, waves and beaches for all people. They have begun a campaign to “Get Nuclear Waste Off California’s Coast” and interviewed Ken Buesseler about liquid effluent being released from the now-closed San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant: How worried should we be?…

International Conference on Methods and Applications of Radioanalytical Chemistry (MARC) Website: http://www.marcconference.org/ ABOUT THE CONFERENCE The conference will continue the tradition set by the eleven previous MARC conferences by focusing on emerging developments in radioanalytical chemistry, with particular emphasis on new applications. These conferences have grown to become a major international forum for the field…

A new paper, “Metrics that matter for assessing the ocean biological carbon pump” published online April 6th, has landed on the COVER of the May 5th print edition of PNAS . Written by Ken Buessler, former PhD student Erin Black and collaborators Phil Boyd and David Siegle, they demonstrate that the depth of the sunlit…

Despite the fact that the Institution has been virtually shut down during this health crisis people have been working to gather and deliver gloves, masks, protective suits, and boot and shoe covers to Cape Cod Hospital to help healthcare workers deal with the Covid-19 crisis. Read more about how Cafe Thorium put our pile together…

In a guest blog, Ken Buesseler from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, calls for better understanding of the ocean’s biological processes before attempting to geoengineer climate solutions. It is natural in the face of an impending emergency to look for something—anything—that will avert the crisis. So it is understandable that in the absence of a…

“Marine radiochemist Ken Buesseler is on a quest to provide fresh answers about how much radiation remains on the [Marshall] islands. “What we want to scientifically understand is, how is [radioactivity] going up or down over time, over the years and decades?” Buesseler said. He’s setting out this November to teach a duo of Marshalese…

As clean up continues at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, workers have filled more than 1000 tanks with more than 1 million tons of contaminated water. Japan’s Minister of the Environment recently proposed slowly releasing the contents of these tanks into the ocean. This is of concern to the public and some in the…

Learn about how Minion robots, a technological development for the Ocean Twilight Zone Project, work to help scientists understand the global carbon cycle. Watch the video below and find more information on the Ocean Twilight Zone project page.

Marine chemist weighs in on leaking radioactive dome in the Pacific By Evan Lubofsky There has been a flurry of headlines this summer about a “nuclear coffin” leaking radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean. The coffin—a bomb crater filled with radioactive soil on a tiny island in the Marshall Islands—sits under a 350-foot-wide concrete lid…

You can still buy our T-shirts! Individual sales are available at the following link. Unisex T-shirts and Long sleeved shirts are available. Women’s shirts are also available but require a minimum order of 6…. Please see the following link: https://www.customink.com/designs/cafeth2019/ezx0-00bz-ktzq/ Back Side of Shirt Details: Cafe Thorium World Tour 2009-2019 Antarctica – R/V Gould Bermuda…

Enlisting the public in water sampling after the Fukushima disaster helped build and spread scientific knowledge Read this Op-Ed by Ken Buesseler published online by Scientific American We live in a radioactive world. That simple fact about our planet kept coming to me in the weeks and months after March 11, 2011, when the…

Read about Boyd and co-authors including Ken Buesseler who received the 2019 John H. Martin Award from ASLO. 2019 Martin Award Recipients The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography presents the John H. Martin Award to one paper each year that has led to fundamental shifts in research focus and interpretation of a…

Buesseler Elected to Class of 2018 AAAS Fellows Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. As part of the Section on atmospheric and hydrospheric sciences,…

Watch this Video made by SEEKER for the series “Science in the Extremes” Season 2, Episode 6. You Tube Link to find out more about SEEKER and other episodes in the series: https://www.seeker.com/videos/earth/is-the-pacific-ocean-still-radioactive-from-cold-war-nuclear-tests

What if we explored the ocean’s vast twilight zone, teeming with undiscovered life? Today, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was awarded $35 million—the largest philanthropic gift in the Institution’s history—to do just that. The award comes from The Audacious Project, a bold new philanthropic collaboration housed at TED to fund critical ideas that have…

View Updated results from Our Radioactive Ocean – 6 years following the accident at Fukushima Dai’ichi Nuclear Power Plant.

The Marshall Islands have some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, but their past as a former US nuclear weapons test site means that hardly anyone lives there. Ken Buesseler, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, describes the Runit Dome that was constructed to hold up to 80,000 tonnes of radioactive debris. LISTEN to an…

Scientists study lingering radioactivity of 1946-1958 nuclear weapons tests By Evan Lubofsky | June 5, 2017 Ken Buesseler climbed the highest peak on Enewetak Atoll and peered out over the expanse of paradise below. Offshore lay an azure lagoon inked with a dark-blue circle at its center. But this hole wasn’t natural. It was created…