The tsunami that wrecked the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has led to the toughest nuclear cleanup ever. Radioactive water is still poisoning the sea in numerous places– and it could take 40 years to fix the mess. (9)
Clean-Up
Spread
The initial gigantic amount of contaminated water spread through the immediate Fukushima coastal area very quickly, according to a 2012 report by the American Nuclear Society. But it takes years for the contamination to spread over a wider area. A mathematical model developed by Changsheng Chen of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and Robert Beardsley of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute found that particles from the radiation spread through the ocean differently at different depths. The scientists estimated that in some cases, contaminated seawater could reach the western coast of the United States in as little as five years. Buesseler thinks the process occurs a bit more rapidly, and estimates it might take three years for contamination to reach the U.S. coastline. (7)
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