Environment

Nuclear Contamination

Contaminated water now stored in about 1,000 tanks at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant will be released offshore into the Pacific through a newly planned undersea tunnel.

Operators say they will drill through bedrock beneath the seabed and begin releasing the water about 40 feet below the ocean’s surface beginning in the spring of 2023. They say the scheme is designed to avoid interfering with local fishing.

The stored water from the plant’s meltdowns will first be diluted with large amounts of seawater to reduce the concentration of the radioactive material.

Northernmost Land

Members of a Danish research expedition to Greenland’s northern coastal waters say they accidently discovered what is now believed to be the northernmost island on the planet. While unsuccessfully trying to locate and land on Oodaaq Island to collect samples, they instead “landed on a strange unvegetated bunch of mud, moraine deposits and gravel surrounded by sea ice on all sides.”

After checking their position, the found they were not on Oodaaq, but on land about 3,600 feet farther north than what was previously thought to be the island nearest to the North Pole. The team wants the newly discovered island to be named Qeqertaq Avannarleq, which means “the northernmost island” in Greenlandic.

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