When I was little there was a “company” dessert, consisting of lumps of meringue adrift on a sea of custard. It was fancifully named “Floating Island,” and belonged to the confectionary landscape that included “Baked Alaska” and “Rocky Road.” But this isn’t about dessert.
As a great continent of potentially hot garbage travels slowly across the Pacific toward points west on the America shores, we have a little time to ready ourselves for delivery of the motherload.
The leading edge of floating debris from the tsunami that swept Japan just about a year ago is expected to begin making landfall in Hawaii any day now, and NOAA’s Marine Debris Program wants to know when, and what, it turns up.
It is estimated that roughly twenty tons of the stuff is headed east, and the entire delivery phase may take a couple of years.
Some of the debris seems likely to be swept into a giant slow-moving circle, heading back toward the Hawaiian Islands and then cycling round for a second delivery on the mainland. Computer animation of this effect calls to mind the eddies of water in a flushing toilet.
Some of it may even ultimately reach the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” that doughty landmark of our addiction to plastic that festers and chokes a vast reach of the South Pacific.
NOAA dismisses the possibility that the floating debris field may be carrying radioactive waste to American shores, reassuring denizens of Oregon and California that most of the debris was launched and resolutely moving away before the nuclear accidents began to unfold; but the behavior of floating materials, even in NOAA’s simulations, raises the specter that some material may have been “re-delivered” at Fukushima, only to be contaminated in the aftermath on the radioactive shores before washing once again out to sea.
NOAA seems to be the first to admit that they don’t really know much about the path of the debris.
… there is still a large amount of uncertainty over exactly what is still floating, where it’s located, where it will go, and when it will arrive
They don’t even know how much of it will actually make it to points along the West Coast, observing cheerfully that much of it may sink to the bottom of the ocean during its journey. Their prognosis of low radioactivity in the debris field relies rather heavily on the beneficent ability of the ocean to dilute all the badness away.
In fact, NOAA’s FAQ page has a rather odd way of allaying fears (emphasis mine):
Why isn’t this considered an emergency yet?
It’s hard to take emergency actions when there’s so little information about what we’re responding to – remember: it’s possible that most of the debris will break up, sink, or get caught up in existing garbage patches. We’re working on creating contingency plans that will address scenarios ranging from no debris to high levels of debris.
If I were a tuna or a whale I might find that of damn little comfort.
Great story & nice work.
We still have plutonium orbiting the earth from all those bomb tests starting in 1946 (at Bikini in ’46, they were wise enough to cancel the deep water test because they didn’t know if migrating schools of fish would carry crap all over the oceans). Then we have the crap from Chernobyl. And now this. We have managed to allow radioactive elements from bombs and reactors to be part of the Earth’s atmosphere and its surfaces and sub-surfaces. How long are we going to play Russian roulette with this nuclear gun? Admiral Rickover made safe reactors for the Nautilus and other subs in the fifties. But that was for the safety of our naval warriors. Private corporations have proved that safety comes after profit, and since safety itself diminishes profit, the regulatory arms say: “Well, if they make money, they’ll have the funds to fix things, we hope.” It’s like Global Warming isn’t enough to worry about–they’re throwing in Nuclear Winter on top of it.
Good job on this, Sue. That is, for one who’s not an expert and has to throw it together in between knitting and cooking and housework. (Got that, Tom!) Remember Karin Silkwood, and what they did to her? She wasn’t an expert either.
I’m not philosophically opposed to nuclear power. But it has to be built, managed, and maintained to absolutely the best possible standards. That’s why I’m against VY relicensing; they’ve proven they can’t/won’t do that.
Now, as to whether I’m imposing unreachable conditions on nuclear power, that’s another question.
But Sue’s diary is a great explanation of why I feel that way. The chances of an incident may be small, but the consequences are so far-reaching. And those consequences aren’t figured into the cost of producing nuclear power, not at all. Somehow I doubt that we’ll be billing TEPCO for handling an ocean’s worth of hot waste.
If I thought we (all of us, including the NRC and the nuclear profit-makers busy dumping risk on the rest of us [principle: socialize risk and expense; privatize profit]) had learned something from the meltdown and the debris field and the cheerfully noted ‘possibility’
I might be in favor of scooping up all the floating garbage, compressing/compacting it into loadable blocks, loading it onto one of the many (preferably disarmed) missiles we have in storage and need to get rid of, and firing it into the sun.
With all parts triple-inspected and certified as working properly, of course. Would it were that (ahem) easy.
NanuqFC
If nuclear power plants are safe, let the commercial insurance industry insure them. Until these most expert judges of risk are willing to gamble with their money, I’m not willing to gamble with the health and safety of my family. ~ Donna Reed