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“I applaud you for your efforts to measure radiation and inform the public — this is definitely a needed service that you are providing,” Bandstra wrote May 15, 2011. “Basically, the levels in the rain and air from radionuclides in Japan cannot be reliably detected using your methods, and you are probably measuring natural radioactivity from radon progeny.”

The literal lay of land showed Bandstra to be wrong.

The California Department of Health Services, as it was then called in 1999, conducted a yearlong investigation into the radon levels of 99 Santa Monica residences and released the results March 14 of that year. CDHS found that the radon readings were so minute that the department didn’t even suggest further testing of buildings or homes in the seaside town.

This was not news to the local officials who were well aware that the city sits in a structural depression filled with alluvium and didn’t have the geologic features that would produce radon. In addition, Santa Monica’s predominant wind direction, which dictates much of what will be in the wind, is from the ocean not from upwind land seeping radon gas.

A detailed “Radon Potential Zone Map for Southern Los Angeles County, California” created by the California Geological Survey in January 2005 confirms that Radiation Station Santa Monica doesn’t appear near any possible radon or radon daughters source.

Bandstra did not respond to a request for comment about these radon progeny-free findings.

BUCKYBALLS

HEPA filters may also be effective in capturing ‘buckyballs,’ geodesic dome-shaped structures which is spherical with multiple flat sides. Strong evidence suggests that these hearty radioactive Uranium-60 nanoparticles have spanned the Pacific quickly with their concentrations rising.

That evidence includes Radiation Station – Santa Monica’s hot HEPA filter readings and the EPA’s high beta readings in Los Angeles. Our radiation station is a little over a mile from the Pacific shoreline. Downtown Los Angeles is over 13 miles away from the sea.

The January 27, 2012 U.C. Davis report, “Uranyl peroxide enhanced nuclear fuel corrosion in seawater,” is the first account to analyze what is happening to the gargantuan amount of seawater, as well as fresh water, that has been hosing down the melted reactor cores and flushing into the Pacific.

The study spells out a horrific scenario in which compromised irradiated fuel turned huge amounts of ocean water into a series of uranium-related peroxide compounds containing as many as 60 “uranyl ions” in hearty nanoscale cage clusters that can “potentially transport uranium over long distances.”

It also describes a similar phenomenon occurring for other isotopes of radiation adding further horror to the possibility that the tons of melted reactor fuel is being virtually weaponized on a nanoscale to withstand hostile environments and move quickly through water to deliver its virulent cargo of caged radiation.

The majority of the fuel matrix at the Fukushima reactor complex is made up of uranium-oxide “whose behavior will largely dictate release of matrix-incorporated plutonium and various other radionuclides into water used as a coolant,” according to a full copy of the report obtained by EnviroReporter.com from one of the study’s authors, Dr. Alexandra Navrotsky.

These U60 nano-cages of uranium not only can move fast through water, they last a long time according to the report persisting for “at least 294 days without detectable change.”

Not only does the seawater turn into peroxide-creating buckyball soup, the salt water corrodes the melted nuclear fuel stripping it of the most dangerous radionuclides on Earth which end up in the ocean, a process that has gone on unabated for nearly a year.

Buckyballs don’t need peroxide to continue to persist, according to the study, and can spread to exist in seawater out of the peroxide zone, dissolving or existing as nanoscale radioactive time bombs that will have the capability infuse the marine food chain.

How hot these nano-cage clusters of cancer-causing radiation are depends on what kind and ratio of uranium isotopes make up the 60 in each one.

“A given isotope has the same radioactivity (half-life) regardless of what chemical state it is in,” Dr. Navrotsky told EnviroReporter.com. “So the radioactivity for a constant number of U atoms depends on the proportion of different isotopes in the sample.”

“Reactor fuel is a tailored mixture of them,” she continued, explaining that the buckyball phenomena would affect and ‘cage’ each uranium isotope found in melted nuclear reactor fuel. “They all behave the same chemically, so yes to all of them.”

PACIFIC PESTILENCE

There is a strong possibility that these uranium peroxide buckeyballs are already sloshing around in the waters off of Southern California as this reporter and the EPA’s radiation readings appear to indicate.

It has been nearly a year since this disaster started, the only kind of disaster that gets worse as time goes on. Fukushima is no exception with the extreme temperature spikes and Unit 4’s spent fuel cooling pool’s potential to topple to the ground if and when the leaning building collapses.

If uranium-filled buckyballs, and perhaps other radionuclides, are offshore here and elsewhere on the Pacific Rim where high radiation of the sort we’ve sampled comes from ambient air not radon or precipitation, how do they get to our HEPA filter?

One strong possibility may be ominous for the 40% of humanity that live within 100 kilometers of a marine ecosystem according to United Nations Environment Programme.

Sea spray.

Radioactive sea spray has been shown to blow hundreds of kilometers inland in tests conducted in the United Kingdom by British and European researchers. As one who has ever smelled the salty ocean air miles from the ocean might expect, salt in sea spray can travel a significant distance though it is far larger than what water molecules that it will precipitate around it before remobilization. The same holds true for radioactive particles floating in the sea even if it they aren’t of the U60 buckyballs variety.

In the 2008 report “Sea to land transfer of radionuclides in Cumbria and North Wales: updating of previous investigations” by the Westlakes Scientific Consulting Ltd., of Cumbria, United Kingdom, researchers looked at the inland deposition trends at Nethertown, a burgeoning hamlet 10 kilometers north of the highly contaminated nuclear reprocessing site Sellafield which sits on the east coast of the Irish Sea.

The Westlakes investigation found that the greatest average concentration of cesium-137 and plutonium-239 in soil at a depth of 0 to 15 centimeters was 10 kilometers from the coast. The highest average amounts found at 15 to 30 cm deep were 5 km away from the sea.

A 62-page UK study released in December 2011 by the Manchester-based Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) is one of the most comprehensive analyses of the radiation problems plaguing the water body between the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The government-affiliated citizen activist group has been in existence for 31 years. Knowledge of the Irish Sea and its surrounding communities, combined with sharp science paints a picture of an americium, cesium and plutonium-filled sea that is not pretty.

Among the findings, sea spray and marine aerosols created from bubbles forming and popping when the sea is choppy or waves break have increased concentrations of radioactive “actinides.” Actinides are chemically alike radioactive metallic elements and include uranium and plutonium. One actinide infused the spray with 812 times greater concentration of americium 241 than normal amounts of Am-241 in ambient seawater.

“Research demonstrates that the magnitude of the effect is dependent on wind speed and the
volume of fine sediment particles (with their adsorbed radioactivity) ejected into the air in sea spray and aerosols,” the report reads.

What it doesn’t include are uranium-filled buckyballs that aren’t attached to fine sediment particles as is the case in the Pacific. Buckyballs, which, as noted, may make up the bulk of the Fukushima meltdown goo that poisons the Pacific, would be extra in the West Coast sea radiation exposure scenario.

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22 Comments

  1. Not only is this the most important subject to be talking about..it dwarfs Everything else. The incubation period for Cancer is about 5-30 years, so it WILL hit the fan and it’s going to be very, very ugly. Birth deformities, Cancer for everyone, heart problems. Most people don’t know that Radiation causes heart problems. What I don’t understand, is our government’s lack of involvement. Does he think he is a cyborg or something, that he and his family won’t be affected by the Radiation? Is it just that he is That ill informed? It’s mind boggling.

  2. Thank you very much, Mr. Collins. The nightmare just doesn’t seem to have an ending.

    I work in radiology and am aware of a world-wide isotope shortage which is used in nuclear medicine for imaging. Do you find that odd?

    Good luck everyone.

  3. I find your article quite informative…and am really interested in the reasoning behind “our” governments decisions to stop testing for radiation up our coast lines. Especially when radioactive materials are washing ashore in Alaska? Have shared this with friends and am quite adgitated as to our governments neglect to “protect the citizens”. Is this the “corporations” hushing things for their own greed?

  4. @Bo: To do that we would need the proper equipment, equipment the government has but has not been using to detect Fukushima radiation.

  5. Have you taken samples at the beach and tested them for buckyballs?

  6. Thanks for this article!

    I submitted it as a “Quicklink” article at “OpEd News”. We can vote it up there and link with the social networks.

    It is important information.

    http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Endless-Bummer-in-Sci_Tech-120327-190.html

  7. @jack: It’s easy to email any of the links to this article and anything on the site. Just highlight the web page’s address when you’re on the page, copy and paste it into an email or on to your blog or website. It’s that simple.

  8. I would like to email this article to friends and can’t figure out how to do that. Also, I tried to put the info into a word doc to email and the site wouldn’t let me. Sharing helps to get the word out and get people to your site. Consider adding the option to email others like CNN allows.

  9. Thank you for the excellent and necessary info! This is certainly the most important issue of the day. I saw a clip from Asahi TV “morning bird” news from March 8, 2012 in which a Kyoto University Professor of Nuclear Reactor Science said that even a small earthquake could crack the #4 fuel pool, allowing the water to leak out and the rods to meltdown & go critical causing “the end of Tokyo”. I saw that clip first on enenews and tokyobrowntabby’s yt channel. It’s quite astonishing to see network TV tell the truth for once!

    Thank you Mr. Collins for practicing real investigative journalism in a world so sorely in need. God bless!

    steven dahl
    los angeles

  10. Just wanted to thank you for a wonderful website. Glad your content is protected, I am seeing a lot of material taken and posted on FB without any credit to the author. Please keep up the good work!!

  11. Michael,
    This is your most amazing article yet and your detailed research and knowledge of the subject is absolutely astounding!
    I cannot imagine that there is any other article or piece of research available,that can even begin to approach what you have written here, and I can only hope that some solution to the widespread distribution of this article can be found. It certainly is desperately needed as a warning,
    as we are all potential victims of the radioactive contamination arriving from Fukushima.(Apparently we already have a fair amount of our own).
    It is literally dumbfounding to realize that our government should be, but is not leading the way in providing the kind of environmental testing that you have been doing, along with communicating the results to the public…which they are also not doing. They apparently just don’t get it. We should all be grateful and overjoyed that you do!

  12. Dear Michael & Denise,

    I apologize for offending you, for you have, and I am sorry. It was not an ad hominem attack consciously, for I am very appreciative and enthused as well as horrified.

    In my experience, not being able to copy and paste is very rare, and since I had recently copied and sent to everyone in my mailbox your ‘Bata’ article; and then to suddenly to confounded and then stunned that such vital information was forbidden, when it is the most salient on the internet! And certainly the most censored!

    I wondered if you had been hacked, and went back and checked and discovered that I could not copy ‘Beta’ again.

    The purpose for ‘The Freedom of the Press’ was to keep the government from stopping journalist writing and publishers publishing, what they disliked, true or false.

    The deeped bases is not free enterprise, it was the not prevent the People’s Right to Know, as well as assembly, petition/demand better government. At the time, the common understanding was ‘Governments get their just powers from the governed.’

    That of course is from the Declaration of Independence that was a Declaration of War against British colonialism; by violence too. And they were right, and so would be the American people to have a Revolution based on the denial of critical information they conspired to repress the truth of the effect the unleashed millions of pounds of radioactive materials into the biosphere would happen if nothing was done, and a scenario for “chosen people” to be in their private fallout oasis in far away places, stocked with years of provisions for survival, and we are not even warned!!!

    Your article is the warning, all of this information is The People’s Right Know. It is mass murder, criminal negligence, and a Crime Against Humanity; for all those in the public office on any level, or in the private sector, to not “wake the town and tell the people”

    That is exactly what I wanted to do with your ‘The Endless Bummer’ and not being able to, was most certainly a great-big bummer! I do not accept that the Obama Administration, the congress, and the media. The issue is the ultimate emergency in world history.

    So, from my perspective, someone, effectively hollered, ‘”Stop The Press'” – and copyright argument is ironic, in that I feel, ‘We, the people’ have the Right to Copy and Send! And that is fair use.

    But please be the journalist you are. Being short of money is something most of us understand, and activist don’t expect to be paid for their actions, except within the larger public good; and we are facing omnicide, total death worldwide!

  13. Howard T. Lewis III

    Nice job Mr. Collins. I want to down load this for reference but it won’t go.

  14. Hi Michael,

    I have been very concerned about this topic and with my first child on the way living in southern California it scares me. Can you include the links to the EPA data, videos of your own readings, and the UC Davis report you mentioned so I can learn more? A la footnotes or references from a school paper?

  15. Michael, bravo! This is probably the most bittersweet thing you’ve scribed. I wish I knew how to get people to pay attention. Hopefully this will break the surface and causes some ripples. Failing that maybe a Mr. Radioactive Buckyball character??

  16. @Bill Mitchell: I am glad you like the article but to call copy-protecting of our site “press censorship” is outrageous. We are not an activist group – we are journalists who brought you the information in the first place. We are not obligated to allow people to take our work and post it on their website in its entirety violating our copyright (though we are happy with “fair use” which means a paragraph or description followed by a link to our site.) Unfortunately we have found people putting the entire article up on their sites as if it was their own and therefore must vigorously defend our copyright. Please note Bill that we make less than minimum wage doing what we are doing so if people want to read/see/watch/listen to what we are doing, we ask that they come over to our site, just like you have, for free.

    Besides, it’s pretty simple to mail a link to the article by copying the URL (https://www.enviroreporter.com/2012/03/the-endless-bummer/). You can also print The Endless Bummer out and give copies to your friends at the coffee shop too – we have no problem with that and, in fact, encourage it.

    As for taking a collection for a Geiger-counter, that is a laudable idea and we hope you will share your results with us. But please be careful with loose accusations especially when directed at the very reporter who brought the information to you in the first place.

  17. I wonder what Jim Stone thinks.

  18. Excellent reporting Michael Collins!

    Rhada, you want to think it’s Karma – that’s your free right to do so just as it’s Ken t’s free right to sound off like a butt-crack when he disagrees.

  19. Your expose’ are of the most urgent importance to everyone in the world. The internet is the tribune that requires the message to be copied and pasted to e-mail for immediate dissemination by everyone who read it; but they can not copy, paste, and send to all.

    I managed to do so with your ‘Bata’ article, but can not do so with ‘The Endless Bummer’ and that must be corrected ASAP!

    I am taking a collection toward buying a Geiger-counter and will raise community consciousness with it I assure you. I have been putting the printed copy of Beta before friends and coffee shop casual acquaintances.

    Without that hard copy, I doubt any of them would have read anything you produced. Your current release is a dead-letter online without it being copy and paste friendly.

    Please for the sake of humanity, life itself, correct this electronic press censorship that prohibits the People’s Right to Know!

    Bill Mitchell
    Sonoma county, CA

  20. Radha, stop with the karma rhetoric. Those choosing nuclear strikes are almost fully independent of those suffering from fukushima fallout, with the worst if that hitting Japan. Karma does not work through the physical like this anyways.
    The more important aspect of this reporting, relative to karma, is that despite being aware of these issues, many who could now spread the word, possibly decrease suffering, are choosing to do nothing.
    Thanks for the reporting, keep it up.

  21. We’ve been getting truck loads of fallout in the Southern Hemisphere. From what we’ve seen, we’re amazed anyone is still alive up North.

  22. just karma for our bombing them in 45

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