Earthquakes

Magnitude 5+ Earthquakes – Global

5.6 earthquake hits the South Sandwich Islands.

5.5 earthquake hits north of Ascension Island.

5.0 earthquake hits the Kuril Islands.

5.0 earthquake hits the Pagan region in the North Mariana Islands.

7 Years After Fukushima Disaster

It's been seven years since a magnitude-8.9 earthquake in northeastern Japan triggered a massive tsunami that led to a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Seven years since radioactive materials from the plant poured into the air and the ocean and began making its way toward the West Coast of the United States.

Now that seven years have passed, how radioactive are the waters around the U.S.-Canadian West Coast? And how radioactive is the air and soil on the mainland?

The U.S. and Canadian coastal waters in the Pacific are contaminated, analyses show, but radiation levels are still well below federal standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency, said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. []

The levels are so low, that swimming eight hours every day for a year would only increase a person's annual dose of radiation to an amount that is 1,000 times less than a single dental X-ray, Buesseler said.