Anissa Katti,

Editor (Science)

 

MASSACHUSETTS – The Fukushima catastrophe, which occurred on 11th March 2011, is proven to still be consequential on the environment and thereby alarming scientists. As a matter of fact, latest research shows that the fish present in the water bodies around the Fukushima plant are still radioactive. About 40% of the fish caught around the nuclear plant is unfit for human consumption.

Ken Buessler, a marine biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts (USA), worries that the high levels of Cesium isotopes present in the fish, shellfish and seaweed, are not lowering with time and have remained stagnant. Dr Buessler stresses how abnormal it is for 137 Cs to be present in such large quantity 18 months after the disaster. “The most surprising thing for me was that the levels of radioactivity in the fish were not going down. There should have been much lower numbers,”  he said. This can only be explained by a constant leakage of nuclear waste by Dai-Chi power plant.

As a matter of fact, there are suspicions that the plant has not fully recovered from the seismic hit and that the groundwater is still pouring into the waters that surround it. According to many different reports, the fish will not be comestible for another decade at the very least.