In 2011, Japan’s nuclear regulator raised the danger level of an ongoing radioactive leak at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant to 7 on a 7-point scale. Authorities said on Tuesday (August 2013) that a storage tank has leaked 300 tons of radioactive water into the ground.

Here are five things about the Fukushima radiation leak and related investments:

1. Uranium investors are hurt:

The price per ton of uranium has plunged since the March 2011 nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, which caused losses to anyone who invested in uranium mining stocks. Germany’s shutdown of most of its nuclear reactors pushed uranium demand to even lower levels.

How much radioactive material from Fukushima leaked into the ocean?

Scientists measured 5,000 to 15,000 terabecquerels of radioactive material reaching the ocean in 2011. The biggest threat came from the radionuclide cesium. The radionuclides strontium and tritium pose a greater threat to leaks entering the soil, since the soil absorbs cesium while the other two do not.

A terabecquerel is 1 trillion becquerels, defined as the radioactive decay of a nucleus per second; A sievert is a unit of biological radiation dose that is equivalent to about 50,000 front-view chest X-rays.

2) Nuclear utility investors are hurt:

Investors in nuclear facilities over the last five decades have enjoyed a decent return on their investment, typically in the range of 10 to 12 percent per year. The Fukushima incident has greatly damaged these investments and many of them have fallen between 30 and 50%. It can take years to recover, if they ever do. Some investors sold their shares at a loss, moving on to other investments and trying to start over.

The Tokyo Electric Power Plant (TEPCO) estimated that between 30 trillion and 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium have leaked into the ocean so far polluting it for years, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported.

The damaged plant is still leaking about 300 tons of water containing these radioactive radionuclides into the ocean every day in 2013, Japanese officials said. This huge amount of radiation is poisoning the entire Pacific Ocean on which more than two million fishermen depend to earn a living and feed their families.

3) Fishermen’s livelihoods have been destroyed:

Millions of fishermen from the entire west coast of America, the west coast of Mexico, all of Japan, Korea, the east coast of China, the west coast of Canada and the coasts of Alaska have seen their fishing livelihoods severely damaged by the enormous radiation poisoning of the Pacific Ocean by Japan. Most of these fishermen who had invested their lives in fishing and thousands of dollars invested in their boats are now suffering huge loss of income and loss of funds to make bank payments on their fishing boats. Many file for bankruptcy and work part-time on the land to make ends meet for their families. Pacific Ocean fishing, once a billion dollar a year industry, has collapsed taking a million fishing families with it, a truly horrendous development. Japanese fishermen who followed their fathers into the fishing trade have been decimated by massive ocean poisoning throughout Japan.

How will the radioactive material affect marine life?

US scientists say groundwater leaks could get worse. Nicholas Fisher, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University in New York, told Live Science in a previous article. “But in the region, yes, there may be enough contamination of local shellfish, so it would be unwise to eat that shellfish,Fisher said.

3) Force Fishermen and Women to Stop Investments:

Fishing families now have no additional funds to make other investments like gold, silver or stocks. Some are losing the same house they called home for the last 5-10 years due to falling behind on their mortgage payments, a situation that causes major displacement of families, depression and leads to divorce. Holiday celebrations are bleak as families struggle just to put enough food on the table each week. In some families, parents are forced to take amounts out of their retirement accounts just to help feed the family.

4) Play the Lottery:

As desperation continues to eat away at them, some fishermen allocate a few dollars each week to place bets on their state lottery, praying and hoping the big win will lift their family out of the financial hole they’ve gotten themselves into. This is a long shot, but someone wins every week, so more people keep playing the lottery chasing that one-in-a-million chance, even though it takes dollars out of their meager budgets.

5) Millions of farmers lose money on contaminated crops:

Farmers in Japan have suffered greatly with most of their crops being radioactive and unfit for market. Farmers in the largest growing region in the United States, the famed San Joaquin Valley in central California, have had to spend thousands of dollars more per farm to implement protection strategies to protect and clean their produce from any particulate matter. residual radiation. Dairy farms in Hawaii, the western United States, and Canada found radiation particles in their milk and were forced to dump thousands of wasted gallons. These farmers struggle every month trying to grow their crops free of contamination. Therefore, the investments of time and money in their farms are now questionable if the profits from the harvest will pay more than the annual expenses. Some have switched to indoor greenhouse cultivation to provide a measure of protection. Still, tiny particles of radiation reach the water source and are absorbed by plants even in greenhouses, so the problem continues. Many of these farmers are now struggling to make mortgage payments on their farms and ranches, as well as pay contract workers. Only time will tell how bad the radiation contamination is affecting the millions of people who live near the Pacific Ocean.