Radioactivity in the Pacific Ocean - How long can the dumping of radioactive water in Japan continue?

It’s a big ocean. At the moment it’s not a problem for California, Oregon and Washington. But suppose this continues for months.

“The crack in a maintenance pit discovered over the weekend was the latest confirmation that radioactivity continues to spill into the environment. The leak is a symptom of the primary difficulty at the Fukushima Daiichi complex: Radioactive water is pooling around the plant and preventing workers from powering up cooling systems needed to stabilize dangerously vulnerable fuel rods. The plant operators also deliberately dumped 10,000 tons of tainted water—measuring about 500 times above the legal limit for radioactivity—into the ocean Monday to make space at a storage site for water that is even more highly radioactive.

Efforts over the weekend to clog the leak with a special polymer, sawdust and even shredded newspapers failed to halt the flow at a cracked concrete maintenance pit near the shoreline. The water in that leak contains radioactive iodine at rates 10,000 times the legal limit.

The 8-inch-long crack was discovered in the maintenance pit over the weekend. It is sending radioactive water into area that is normally blocked off by a seawall, but a crack was also discovered in that outer barrier Monday.

“Even if they say the contamination will be diluted in the ocean, the longer this continues, the more radioactive particles will be released and the greater the impact on the ocean,” Edano said. “We are strongly urging TEPCO that they have to take immediate action to deal with this.”

The crisis has sparked protests in Japan and raised questions around the world about the safety of nuclear power. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency told delegates at a nuclear safety conference Monday that the industry cannot afford to ignore these concerns.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-japan-nuclear-20110405,0,2720438.story

Any opinions?

Should the Japanese government discuss the measures with all countries in the Pacific Ocean region? This isn’t a national matter anymore, right? What do you think?