Latest update on the still-evolving disaster of Fukushima: ‘Interestingly, researchers found that instead of outright killing or obviously harming organisms, the low-dose radiation effects were insidious. In rice, for instance, low level gamma radiation in Fukushima Prefecture began to alter healthy seedlings on a genetic level in only three days, hampering the activation of self defense traits and altering DNA replication.‘
Butterflies, too.

(Illustration found here).

More from Science World Report:

After just three days, scientists saw a number of defects.
That’s not all, either.
Another study examining the response of the pale grass blue butterfly, one of the most common butterfly species in Japan, detailed the butterfly’s reduction in size, slowed growth, high mortality, and morphological abnormality.
“Non-contaminated larvae fed leaves from contaminated host plants collected near the reactor showed high rates of abnormality and mortality,” said Joji Otaki of the University of the Ryukyus in Japan.

And on top of the “insidious” behavior of radiation, officials with the incompetent, lying Tokyo Electric Power Co.(Tepco), which supposedly runs Fukushima, has admitted more Fuku-fuck-ups — “all” the fuel rods in reactor 3 melted down and fell onto the bottom of the containment vessel, despite earlier reports that only about 60 percent of the fuel core had melted.
Expect the worse:

The revised estimate is based on the finding that an emergency cooling system, known as HPCI, of reactor 3 stopped working six hour earlier than previously thought, and that the meltdown had also started more than five hours earlier.
Tepco had previously said that the HPCI had shut down at 2:42 a.m. on March 13, 2011.
But further investigation over the past year determined that the HPCI appeared to have lost its cooling function about at 8:00 p.m. on March 12.

And here on California’s Pacific Ocean shoreline, Fukushima’s water-borne radiation hasn’t bothered us yet, at least since May.
And yet:

The Kelp Watch 2014 project – which is co-headed by Dr. Steven Manley, marine biology professor at Long Beach State – has gathered kelp samples from as far north as Kodiak Island, Alaska, to as far south as Baja California to determine the extent of possible radiation contamination from the Fukushima disaster in March 2011.
During the first phase of the project, samples were primarily collected from Feb. 24 through March 14 at 38 of the 44 sites originally identified by researchers for testing of cesium-137 and -134 isotopes, according to researchers.
“So far, it appears that, based on our analysis of kelp, that none of the Fukushima radiation has arrived via the ocean current to our shoreline,” Manley said.

However, a lot of shit is coming our way — all kinds of junk now junking Canada’s western shores:

Canadian fishermen off the coast of Langara Island in British Columbia say they are seeing “waist-high” debris from Fukushima, Japan, that goes on for up to 15 miles floating in the Pacific Ocean.
They are concerned that some of this detritus may be radioactive or contaminated by toxic waste as a result of the now-infamous meltdown of the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant in 2011.
Piles of debris seen in the Pacific today, it is believed, originated in Fukushima after a 50-foot-high tsunami struck the town and nearby nuclear plant, resulting in massive flooding, destruction and partial meltdowns in three of the plant’s four reactors.

Splitting the atom was one of mankind’s most-insidious moves, and just adding to the woes of modern life.