Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By Jeremy Hsu 
 
 A radioactive plume of water in the Pacific Ocean from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, which was crippled in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, will likely reach U.S. coastal waters starting in 2014, according to a new study. The long journey of the radioactive particles could help researchers better understand how the ocean’s currents circulate around the world. 
 
 
 
 Ocean simulations showed that the plume of radioactive cesium-137 released by the Fukushima disaster in 2011 could begin flowing into U.S. coastal waters starting in early 2014 and peak in 2016. Luckily, two ocean currents off the eastern coast of Japan — the Kuroshio Current and the Kuroshio Extension — has diluted the radioactive material so much that its concentration fell well below the World Health Organization’s safety levels within four months of the Fukushima incident. But it could have been a different story if nuclear disaster struck on the other side of Japan. 
 
 “The environmental impact could have been worse if the contaminated water would have been released in another oceanic environment in which the circulation was less energetic and turbulent,” said Vincent Rossi, an oceanographer and postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems in Spain. 
 
 Fukushima’s radioactive water release has taken its time journeying across the Pacific. By comparison, atmospheric radiation from the Fukushima plant began reaching the U.S. West Coast within just days of the disaster back in 2011. [Fukushima Radiation Leak: 5 Things You Should Know] 
 
 Tracking radioactivity’s path 
 
 The radioactive plume has three different sources: radioactive particles falling out from the atmosphere into the ocean, contaminated water directly released from the plant, and water that became contaminated by leaching radioactive particles from tainted soil. 
 
 
 
 This computer projection shows the estimated extent of the Fukushima spill's plume of radioactive water in 2014. The extent of U.S. coastal waters is indicated by a black line, with a black box enclosing Hawaii. Rossi et al. / Deep-Sea Research I 
 
 The release of cesium-137 from Fukushima in Japan’s more turbulent eastern currents means the radioactive material is diluted to the point of posing little threat to humans by the time it leaves Japan’s coastal waters. Rossi worked with former colleagues at the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Australia to simulate the spread of Fukushima’s radioactivity in the oceans — a study detailed in the October issue of the journal Deep-Sea Research Part 1. 
 
 Researchers averaged 27 experimental runs of their model — each run starting in a different year — to ensure that the simulated spread of the cesium-137 as a "tracer" was not unusually affected by initial ocean conditions. Many oceanographers prefer using cesium-137 to track the ocean currents because it acts as a passive tracer in seawater, meaning it doesn't interact much with other things, and decays slowly with a long half-life of 30 years. 
 
 “One advantage of this tracer is its long half-life and our ability to measure it quite accurately, so that it can be used in the future to test our models of ocean circulation and see how well they represent reality over time,” Rossi told LiveScience. “In 20 years' time, we could go out, grab measurements everywhere in the Pacific and compare them to our model.” 
 
 Journey across the Pacific Rim 
 
 The team focused on predicting the path of the radioactivity until it reached the continental shelf waters stretching from the U.S. coastline to about 180 miles (300 kilometers) offshore. About 10 to 30 becquerels (units of radioactivity representing decay per second) per cubic meter of cesium-137 could reach U.S. and Canadian coastal waters north of Oregon between 2014 and 2020. (Such levels are far below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s limits for drinking water.) 
 
 
 
 By comparison, California’s coast may receive just 10 to 20 becquerels per cubic meter from 2016 to 2025. That slower, lesser impact comes from Pacific currents taking part of the radioactive plume down below the ocean surface on a slower journey toward the Californian coast, Rossi explained. 
 
 A large proportion of the radioactive plume from the initial Fukushima release won't even reach U.S. coastal waters anytime soon. Instead, the majority of the cesium-137 will remain in the North Pacific gyre — a region of ocean that circulates slowly clockwise and has trapped debris in its center to form the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” — and continue to be diluted for approximately a decade following the initial Fukushima release in 2011. (The water from the current power plant leak would be expected to take a similar long-term path to the initial plume released, Rossi said.) 
 
 But the plume will eventually begin to escape the North Pacific gyre in an even more diluted form. About 25 percent of the radioactivity initially released will travel to the Indian Ocean and South Pacific over two to three decades after the Fukushima disaster, the model showed. 
 
 You can follow Jeremy Hsu on Twitter @jeremyhsu. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience. 
 
 Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 
 
 ||||| Story highlights TEPCO found high radiation readings Saturday 
 
 It said the highest levels measured were so-called beta radiation 
 
 There's been a sharp spike in radiation levels measured in the pipes and containers holding water at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. 
 
 But the company in charge of cleaning it up says that only a single drop of the highly contaminated water escaped the holding tanks. 
 
 Tokyo Electric Power Company said it is confident it can provide safety for workers dealing with the problem. 
 
 "We will find out the cause of this issue and make proper counter measures immediately, and continue to make every effort to secure safety of workers," the company said in a statement released Sunday. 
 
 TEPCO found high radiation readings at the contaminated water storage tanks and pipe Saturday. The four locations are the bottom of three tanks and a pipe connecting tanks in separate area. 
 
 JUST WATCHED Nuclear crisis in Japan Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Nuclear crisis in Japan 03:21 
 
 JUST WATCHED Fukushima plant 'house of horrors' Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Fukushima plant 'house of horrors' 03:15 
 
 JUST WATCHED How dangerous is Japan's nuclear leak? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH How dangerous is Japan's nuclear leak? 03:07 
 
 The highest reading as 1800 millisieverts per hour at the bottom fringe of the tank. 220 and 70 mSv were measured at the bottom of other two tanks. And TEPCO said they found a dried stain under the pipe with 230 mSv/h radiation measurement. 
 
 One drop of liquid fell when a staff member pressed on insulation material around the pipe. But TEPCO said no contaminated water leak is expected as there were no change in the water level in tanks. 
 
 The enormous tanks are identical to the container that was announced last week to have leaked 300 tons of highly toxic water and sparking a hike to the threat level to "serious." 
 
 TEPCO will investigate the cause and look further if there were any leakage. 
 
 But TEPCO also took issue with reporting by some news outlets that the new radiation levels were high enough to cause death after several hours of exposure. 
 
 It said the highest levels measured were so-called beta radiation, which quickly dissipates over short distances and is easily shielded through the use of thin sheets of metal and foil. 
 
 "Since beta radiation is weak and can be blocked by a thin metal sheet such as aluminum, we think that we can control radiation exposure by using proper equipments and cloths," the company added.
– New tests at Fukushima have found radiation levels around its tanks are up to 18 times worse than previously thought—high enough to kill someone within four hours of exposure, reports the BBC. What's caused the alarming spike? More accurate measuring equipment, says plant operator TEPCO. The previous equipment could only read up to 100 millisieverts an hour. Its estimation of the radiation level at the time? 100 millisieverts an hour. The new equipment recorded readings of up to 1,800 millisieverts an hour. TEPCO also says there was a recent leak in one of the tanks—but insists only a single drop of radioactive water escaped. It says the drop fell when someone pressed the insulation around the pipe at the bottom of the tank, CNN reports. The tank is identical to the one that has already leaked 300 tons of water. In related news, a new study estimates that the radioactive plume of water released by the 2011 disaster will hit US waters in early 2014 and peak in 2016, reports NBC News. Fortunately, ocean currents will have diluted the radioactive material down to safe levels by then.