The researchers also conducted experiments on Japanese beach samples in the lab to demonstrate that
cesium did indeed "stick" to sand grains and then lost their "stickiness" when they were flushed with salt water.
The amount of radioactive waste detected by the researchers in the adjoining water is roughly equal to the amounts drifting in from the other two known sources: ongoing releases and runoff from the plant itself, and overflow from rivers that carry
cesium from the fallout on land.
The accuracy of the model 8860 exceeds that of the
cesium for periods of up to one day.
The chemical properties of radioactive
cesium are similar to those of non-radioactive
cesium and naturally occurring potassium and sodium, which are abundant in seawater.
Cesium accumulates in fish muscle tissues, typically at about 100 times the concentration levels in the surrounding seawater.
When tested on contaminated soil in Fukushima Prefecture, the levels of radioactive
cesium in the soil decreased from 67,300 becquerels per kilogram to 29 becquerels.
It basically says that these things [optical atomic clocks] are now capable of being better than
cesium [clocks]," says atomic clock specialist Patrick Gill of the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England.
8 ( ANI ): More than 30 hotspots of radioactive
cesium concentrations have been discovered in the Pacific Ocean, as far as Abukuma River in Miyagi Prefecture, 70 km north of the Fukushima No.
Radioactive
cesium readings in groundwater samples taken from an observation hole by the sea at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station increased further on Tuesday compared with the samples taken the day before, Tokyo Electric Power Co.
In fact, most of the
cesium present in today's oceans, Buesseler noted, is a remnant of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing conducted by the United States, France, and Great Britain during the 1950s and '60s.
Bluefin tuna migrating from Japan to Southern California are bringing a little excess baggage with them -- radioactive
cesium isotopes originating from the Japanese nuclear power plant damaged by last year's tsunami, (http://www.
