A research team, which includes a Cal State Long Beach professor, announced Tuesday that radiation from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster has not entered the West Coast kelp ecosystem.
“Results from our fifth sampling period from March through June of this year were very similar to the previous sampling periods obtained over the past two years and demonstrate no detectable amounts of Cesium 134 or elevated Cesium 137 levels in kelp that could be attributed to the Fukushima disaster,” said Steven Manley, a CSULB professor in Department of Biological Sciences, in a statement.
The announcement followed recent kelp samplings taken from sites near Alaska, San Diego and Long Beach, in a research effort dubbed “Kelp Watch.”
Manley launched the project in 2014 with Kai Vetter from the UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering, using Giant and Bull kelp beds as indicators of radioactive seawater pushing from Fukushima through the North Pacific Coast. The core of the power plant melted down after an earthquake triggered a tsunami that struck the northern Japanese coast in March 2011.
Continue reading at Is there radiation in the kelp off the Long Beach coast? This is what CSULB researchers say
