Affiliations 

  • 1 First Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Qingdao 266061, China; Laboratory for Regional Oceanography and Numerical Modeling, Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Qingdao 266237, China; Key Laboratory of Marine Science and Numerical Modeling, Ministry of Natural Resources, Qingdao 266061, China; Shandong Key Laboratory of Marine Science and Numerical Modeling, Qingdao 266061, China
  • 2 Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NRG), Arnhem, the Netherlands
  • 3 Institute of Mathematical Machine and System Problems, Kyiv, Ukraine
  • 4 Oceanic Consulting and Trading, Yangpyeong-ro, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • 5 Dpt. Física Aplicada I, ETSIA, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain
  • 6 Institute of Oceanography and Environment, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia
  • 7 Oceanography and Environment Division, Phuket Marine Biological Center, Phuket, Thailand
  • 8 First Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Qingdao 266061, China; Laboratory for Regional Oceanography and Numerical Modeling, Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Qingdao 266237, China; Key Laboratory of Marine Science and Numerical Modeling, Ministry of Natural Resources, Qingdao 266061, China; Shandong Key Laboratory of Marine Science and Numerical Modeling, Qingdao 266061, China. Electronic address: qiaofl@fio.org.cn
Mar Pollut Bull, 2021 May 21;169:112515.
PMID: 34023585 DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.112515

Abstract

Japan recently announced plans to discharge over 1.2 million tons of radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) into the Pacific Ocean. The contaminated water can poses a threat to marine ecosystems and human health. To estimate the impact of the plan, here, we developed a three-dimensional global model to track the transport and dispersion of tritium released from the radioactive water of the FDNPP. The pollution scenarios for four release durations (1 month, 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years) were simulated. The simulation results showed that for the release in short-duration scenarios (1 month and 1 year), the peak plume with high tritium concentration shifted with the currents and finally reached the northeastern Pacific. For the long-duration scenarios (5 years and 10 years), the peak plume of the contaminated water was confined to coastal regions east of Japan.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.