Tokyo: Seaborne radiation from Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant will wash up on the West Coast of the US this year.

That's raising concerns among some Americans including the residents of the San Francisco Bay Area city of Fairfax, California, which passed a resolution on December 6 calling for more testing of coastal seafood.

Specimens at the Marine Ecology Research Institute's central laboratory in Onjuku, Chiba Prefecture, Japan in 2013. Credit:Bloomberg

At the same time, oceanographers and radiological scientists say such concerns are unwarranted given existing levels of radiation in the ocean.

The runoff from the Japanese plant will mingle with radiation released by other atomic stations, such as Diablo Canyon in California. Under normal operations, Diablo Canyon discharges more radiation into the sea, albeit of a less dangerous isotope, than the Fukushima station, which suffered the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.