(Wine Spectator) - Bordeaux scientists find (harmless) evidence of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Napa Cabernets

Two years ago, nuclear scientist Michael Pravikoff, an American ex-pat working in France, was shopping at the local supermarket when he came across a few bottles of Napa Valley Cabernet. It lead to a fascinating experiment that led to the discovery of radioactive isotopes generated by the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in California wines. (Completely harmless levels of radioactive isotopes, to be more specific.)

Pravikoff and colleagues at the Centre d'Etudes Nucleaires de Bordeaux Gradignan (CENBG) had been working on a unique method of authenticating rare and expensive wines. One of Pravikoff's colleagues, pharmacologist Philippe Hubert, had discovered in 2001 that he could date unopened bottles of wine by testing them for cesium-137. 

Cesium-137 is a radioactive isotope of the element cesium that does not occur in nature. Any wines containing cesium-137 would have to have been vinified after the mid-20th century, when Cold War nuclear testing began. The presence of cesium-137, therefore, can be used as an identifying marker to authenticate when a wine was produced.