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.

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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 into the ocean, radiation levels have fallen to safe levels in all but the waters closest to the shuttered power plant. Today, fish and other seafood caught in waters beyond all but a limited region have been found to be well within Japan’s strict limits for radioactive contamination, but a new hazard exists and is growing every day in the number of storage tanks on land surrounding the power plant that hold contaminated wastewater.

Read the article in SCIENCE here (PDF) and the full WHOI press release!

Opening the floodgates at Fukushima by Ken Buesseler; SCIENCE Perspectives, Volume 369, Issue 6504, pp 621-622. Aug. 7, 2020.

ALSO see answers to some Frequently Asked Questions about the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident and the ocean HERE.