WSJ: Plutonium Levels 1,000 Times Normal On Seafloor 50 Mi From SF- Expert Appalled: Major Nuclear Dump Offshore Is A Threat To Health- Around 50,000 Containers of Radioactive Waste in Globally Significant Ecosystem

Wall St. Journal, Dec. 31, 2013:

• [There's] a major [nuclear] dump site [...] about 50 miles west of San Francisco [in] “a globally significant” ecosystem “that supports abundant wildlife and valuable fisheries.”
• [A]n estimated 47,000 containers lie at the site near San Francisco
• 2010 report from [NOAA] [...] called the waste site a “potentially significant resource threat.”

The ’91 Study

• [S]tudy found fish contamination and recommended follow-up research
• A spokeswoman for the California Department of Public Health said [...] researchers “didn’t find anything in the first survey.”
• “I would beg to differ,” Thomas Suchanek, the principal investigator and lead author of the 1991 study, said recently
• [P]lutonium in underwater sediment at the dump site was up to about 1,000 times normal background levels
• The study found americium, a radioactive decay product of plutonium, in some fish samples from the site as well as a comparison area about 60 miles away
• Regularly eating such contaminated fish, about a pound a week, could expose a person to up to 18.5 millirems [...] A chest X-ray typically gives about 2 to 10 millirems

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