Abstract
The events that followed the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, included the loss of power and overheating at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants, which led to extensive releases of radioactive gases, volatiles, and liquids, particularly to the coastal ocean. The fate of these radionuclides depends in large part on their oceanic geochemistry, physical processes, and biological uptake. Whereas radioactivity on land can be resampled and its distribution mapped, releases to the marine environment are harder to characterize owing to variability in ocean currents and the general challenges of sampling at sea. Five years later, it is appropriate to review what happened in terms of the sources, transport, and fate of these radionuclides in the ocean. In addition to the oceanic behavior of these contaminants, this review considers the potential health effects and societal impacts.
RAS ID
23460
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-2017
Location of the Work
United States
Funding Information
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Deerbrook Charitable Trust
Generalitat de Catalunya through MERS (grant 2014 SGR 1356)
European Commission 7th Framework COMET-FRAME project (grant agreement 604974)
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain (project CTM2011-15152-E)
Investissement d'Avenir, National Research Agency (AMORAD project, grant ANR-11-RSNR-0002)
Center for Environmental Radioactivity (NFR Centers of Excellence grant 223268/F50)
Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction, and Response Network
School
School of Science
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Publisher
Annual Reviews
Recommended Citation
Buesseler, K. O., Dai, M., Aoyama, M., Benítez-Nelson,, C. R., Charmasson, S. S., Higley, K. A., Maderich, V. S., Masqué, P., Morris, P. J., Oughton, D. H., & Smith, J. N. (2017). Fukushima Daiichi-derived radionuclides in the ocean: Transport, fate, and impacts. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-010816-060733
Comments
Buesseler, K., Dai, M., Aoyama, M., Benitez-Nelson, C., Charmasson, S., Higley, K., ... & Smith, J. N. (2017). Fukushima Daiichi–derived radionuclides in the ocean: Transport, fate, and impacts. Annual Review of Marine Science, 9, 173-203.
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-010816-060733