Nearly two years after the nuclear disaster in Japan, caused by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, leading to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, a fish caught near the site had a record-breaking level of radioactive contamination.
How bad? over 2500x the legal limit. ‘Mike the Murasoi’ was measured by TEPCO, the Tokyo electric power company, at 254,000 becquerels per kilogram. The limit for edible seafood is 100 becquerels. The previous record was ten times lower, standing at 25,800 becquerels/kg.
As a new set of precautions TEPCO is installing new nets 20km around the Fukushima Daichi site to avoid highly contaminated fish getting too far and being consumed by other species.
While the existence of fish like ‘Mike’ is alarming, some might be relieved to know that the Blinky phenomenon, as depicted on ‘The Simpsons’ in the episode Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish during the second season of the show, portraying a fish from the contaminated lake having three eyes, mutated by toxic waste from the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant pouring into the river.
In other Fukushima related news, Toshiba recently unveiled a explorer robot, used for analyzing the radioactive remains of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear reactor.
