Tracy Loew

Statesman Journal

A crowdsourced effort to test West Coast waters for radiation from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has its first result from Oregon.

The sample, taken last month in Pacific City, showed no evidence of radiation from the Japanese power plant.

RELATED: Fukushima radiation concerns coastal communities

Massive amounts of contaminated water were released from Fukushima following a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Radioactive water has continued to leak and be released from the complex.

Scientists say the radiation will hit the U.S. this year at very low levels that won't harm humans or the environment. But no federal agency is monitoring it.

So Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution put together a project called "How Radioactive is Our Ocean?"

It uses crowd-sourced money and volunteers to collect samples, which Buesseler analyzes at his lab in Massachusetts.

About 30 samples, from the Bering Strait to San Diego, have been completed so far this year. All have come back negative for Fukushima radiation, which has a distinctive signature.

The samples do show background radiation from nuclear testing of the 1950s and 1960s.

In Oregon, the Pacific City sample was funded by the Tillamook Estuaries Partnership. It will collect samples at the same spot in about six and 12 months, director Lisa Phipps said.

Tillamook Estuaries Partnership also is sponsoring three samples at Tillamook Bay.

Further south, Bandon Designs construction company led a community effort to fund a sample there.

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