Isn’t salmon usually caught in the ocean near the river’s mouth? The closer salmon get to spawning, the worse they taste. And it’s hard to get a large ship up the river. This seems like it would be more of an issue for trout fisherman, especially because trout are full time residents of the river.

We’re talking about a nuclear waste spill that is still just as dealy 40 years after it happened and none of you think the cesium from early life stages will still be there?

Fun fact I just learned: some salmon survive spawning. So a fraction of adult salmon could be re-exposed. Which is probably the more likely vector since childhood exposure is more time for symptoms to catch up with them.

We do eat a lot of Atlantic salmon here, it’s true, but we also eat named PNW salmon species like chinook, coho, steelhead trout, and at least some of those are indigenous to the Columbia.

The real problem with the columbia and salmon is that the columbia is becoming an unviable spawning ground. That entails a full collapse of the species in the region and any other species depending on salmon for food. Doesn't matter where you want to catch salmon if there are none to be caught.

Salmon aren’t allowed to be caught in the river barring treaty exceptions (so tribes can do it), also grizzly bears will eat salmon going up to spawn, but they aren’t a problem on the Columbia.

There’s no bears on the upper Columbia? That’s sad.

Lower Columbia. I don’t know about upper, that’s in BC, so there should be a few grizzlies at least. Just not sure if they are on the Columbia or not.

They've found that bears and birds can transport nitrogen from salmon over 100 miles from the river. If they can transport nitrogen that far they can transport cesium.

But those bears are way way up river of Hanford. Ah, but salmon are swimming the other way to spawn.

The columbia is a spawning ground, but it is spawning less than 10% what it used to. During the heat dome many salmon were getting burns on their body. The water level is too shallow to keep the water temps down. This is due to damming, irrigation, and water usage. Yakima is home to thousands of green lawns in the middle of the desert thanks to water rates where you can water an acre of lawn for hours a day, every day for super cheap.

Meanwhile, the entirety of the Puget sound, the water body right next to seattle has a bunch of salmon (seattle is a port town), rather than the columbia river that is 200 miles away.

Most of the salmon we eat these days comes from Norway.