Japanese Debris to Hit Western U.S. and Canada I noted in June
that debris from carried out to sea in the Japanese tsunami
would hit the Western U.S. and Canada within a year or so, and
that nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen urged us to demand testing
of radioactivity from the American government. It turns out that
scientists underestimated the speed with which the debris would
reach the Western coast of North America. As Canada’s National
Post reports today: The largest items swept out to sea following
the Japanese tsunami in March could arrive on the B.C. coastline
within days, oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer predicted on
Wednesday. The main part of the 20-million-tonne debris field,
equivalent in size to the state of California, isn’t expected
until about 2014, but houses, fishboats and even small
freighters could already be close to Canadian shores, Mr.
Ebbesmeyer said. “We just finished running a simulation with a
drifter, a buoy that got lost in the area of the tsunami, and we
find that the first of the de