Radiation to Reach California on Friday

California Seeing No Radiation Level Increase

March 18, 2011

Reuters – California air quality officials said on Friday they saw no elevated radiation levels on the U.S. West Coast from Japan's nuclear power plant disaster.

"At this point we're unable to verify if there are any elevated levels," said Ralph Borrmann, a spokesman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in San Francisco. "We're not seeing it on our live data in California."

Radiation levels have not shown an increase at any of the monitoring stations up and down the West Coast, he added.

Earlier on Friday, diplomatic sources in Vienna said data showed tiny amounts of radioactive particles that were believed to have come from Japan's stricken Fukushima plant.

The level of radiation was far too low to cause any harm to humans, they said. One diplomat, citing information from a network of international monitoring stations, described the material as "ever so slight," consisting of only a few particles.

"They are irrelevant," the diplomat added.

Another diplomatic source also said the level was very low.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, a Vienna-based independent body for monitoring possible breaches of the test ban, has more than 60 stations around the world, including one in Sacramento in California.

They can pick up very small amounts of radioactive particles such as iodine isotopes.

"Even a single radioactive atom can cause them to measure something and this is more or less what we have seen in the Sacramento station," said the first diplomat, who declined to be identified.

He said the particles were believed to originate from the Fukushima plant, which has leaked radioactivity since being damaged by last week's massive earthquake and tsunami.

The CTBTO provides data to its member states, but does not make the details public.

On Thursday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said radioactivity would disperse over the long distance and it did not expect any harmful amounts to reach the country.

Radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 spread around the globe and reached the west coast of the United States in 10 days, its levels measurable but minuscule.

Testing Finds No Health Threat Along West Coast

March 18, 2011

AP - Federal and state officials sought Friday to dispel fears of a wider danger from radioactivity spewing from Japan's crippled nuclear reactors, saying testing indicated there were no health threats along the West Coast of the U.S.

Driven by winds over the Pacific Ocean, a radioactive plume released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi reached Southern California Friday, heightening concerns that Japan's nuclear disaster was assuming international proportions.

However, the results of testing reflected expectations by International Atomic Energy Agency officials that radiation had dissipated so much by the time it reached the U.S. coastline that it posed no health risk whatsoever to residents.

The U.S. Department of Energy said minuscule amounts of of the radioactive isotope xenon-133 — a gas produced during nuclear fission — had reached Sacramento in Northern California, but the readings were far below levels that could pose any health risks.

Initial readings from a monitoring station tied to the U.N.'s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization were about "one-millionth of the dose rate that a person normally receives from rocks, bricks, the sun and other natural background sources," the U.S. Department of Energy said in a prepared statement.

The statement confirmed statements from diplomats and officials in Vienna earlier in the day.

Air pollution regulators in Southern California said they have not detected increased levels of radiation.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District said radiation measured at its three sites was not higher than typical levels.

The agency's monitors are part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's network of more than 100 sensors across the nation that track radiation levels every hour.

In Alaska, Dr. Bernd Jilly, director of state public health laboratories, also said monitoring had shown no readings of above-normal levels of radiation.

The same was true in the state of Washington, health department spokesman Donn Moyer said. The levels would have to be hundreds of thousands of times higher than current readings before health officials would recommend any response, he said.

Graham Andrew, a senior official of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said that after consultation with the IAEA, the International Civil Aviation Organization found there was no reason to curtail normal international flights and maritime operations to and from Japan and "there is no medical basis for imposing additional measures to protect passengers."

The CTBTO presentation Friday showed radiation levels peaking in Tokyo and other cities in the first days of the disaster at levels officials said were well below risk points before tapering off.

"The rates in Tokyo and other cities ... remain far from levels which require action, in other words they are not dangerous to human health," Andrew said.

While set up to monitor atmospheric nuclear testing, the CTBTO's worldwide network of stations can detect earthquakes, tsunamis and fallout from nuclear accidents such as the disaster on Japan's northeastern coast that was set off by a massive earthquake and a devastating tsunami a week ago.

Since then, emergency crews have been trying to restore the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant's cooling system and prevent overheated fuel rods from releasing greater doses of radioactivity.

Japanese officials on Friday reclassified the rating of the accident at the plant from Level 4 to Level 5 on a seven-level international scale, putting it on a par with the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. The International Nuclear Event Scale defines a Level 4 incident as having local consequences and a Level 5 as having wider consequences.

Nuclear experts have been saying for days that Japan was underplaying the severity of the nuclear crisis.

Andrew refused to be drawn on that issue, saying severity assessments would be the task of a post-emergency investigation. Describing the situation as very serious, he nonetheless noted no significant worsening since his last briefing Thursday, when he used similar terminology.

Things are "moving to a stable, non-changing situation, which is positive," he said. "You don't want things that are rapidly changing."

Radiation to Reach California on Friday

Radiation from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will reach Southern California on Friday, according to the United Nations. There’s no need to run, however: officials will say the radiation will dilute as it moves overseas and will have minor consequences at worst.

March 16, 2011

New York Times - Health and nuclear experts emphasize that radiation in the plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States, even if hints of it are ultimately detectable. In a similar way, radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 spread around the globe and reached the West Coast of the United States in 10 days, its levels measurable but minuscule.

The projection, by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, an arm of the United Nations in Vienna, gives no information about actual radiation levels but only shows how a radioactive plume would probably move and disperse.

The forecast, calculated Tuesday, is based on patterns of Pacific winds at that time and the predicted path is likely to change as weather patterns shift.

On Sunday, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it expected that no “harmful levels of radioactivity” would travel from Japan to the United States “given the thousands of miles between the two countries.”

The test ban treaty group routinely does radiation projections in an effort to understand which of its global stations to activate for monitoring the worldwide ban on nuclear arms testing. It has more than 60 stations that sniff the air for radiation spikes and uses weather forecasts and powerful computers to model the transport of radiation on the winds.

On Wednesday, the agency declined to release its Japanese forecast, which The New York Times obtained from other sources. The forecast was distributed widely to the agency’s member states.

But in interviews, the technical specialists of the agency did address how and why the forecast had been drawn up.

“It’s simply an indication,” said Lassina Zerbo, head of the agency’s International Data Center. “We have global coverage. So when something happens, it’s important for us to know which station can pick up the event.”

For instance, the Japan forecast shows that the radioactive plume will probably miss the agency’s monitoring stations at Midway and in the Hawaiian Islands but is likely to be detected in the Aleutians and at a monitoring station in Sacramento.

The forecast assumes that radioactivity in Japan is released continuously and forms a rising plume. It ends with the plume heading into Southern California and the American Southwest, including Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The plume would have continued eastward if the United Nations scientists had run the projection forward.

Earlier this week, the leading edge of the tangible plume was detected by the Navy’s Seventh Fleet when it was operating about 100 miles northeast of the Japanese reactor complex. On Monday, the Navy said it had repositioned its ships and aircraft off Japan “as a precautionary measure.”

The United Nations agency has also detected radiation from the stricken reactor complex at its detector station in Gunma, Japan, which lies about 130 miles to the southwest.

The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory B. Jaczko, said Monday that the plume posed no danger to the United States.

“You just aren’t going to have any radiological material that, by the time it traveled those large distances, could present any risk to the American public,” he said in a White House briefing.

Mr. Jaczko was asked if the meltdown of a core of one of the reactors would increase the chance of harmful radiation reaching Hawaii or the West Coast.

“I don’t want to speculate on various scenarios,” he replied. “But based on the design and the distances involved, it is very unlikely that there would be any harmful impacts.”

The likely path of the main Japanese plume across the Pacific has also caught the attention of Europeans, many of whom recall how the much closer Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine began spewing radiation.

In Germany on Wednesday, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection held a news conference that described the threat from the Japanese plume as trifling and said there was no need for people to take iodine tablets. The pills can prevent poisoning from the atmospheric release of iodine-131, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear plants. The United States is also carefully monitoring and forecasting the plume’s movements. The agencies include the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy.

On Wednesday, Steven Chu, the energy secretary, told Congress that the United States was planning to deploy equipment in Japan that could detect radiation exposure on the ground and in the air. In total, the department’s team includes 39 people and more than eight tons of equipment.

“We continue to offer assistance in any way we can,” Dr. Chu said at a hearing, “as well as informing ourselves of what the situation is.”

Watch video report here.
You can watch its projected path in this graphic. (New York Times)

State Has Started Monitoring Radiation Levels

March 17, 2011

KTLA - California health officials have announced Thursday that they have started monitoring radiation levels at over a dozen sites.

Data from the California Department of Public Health will be made available sometime next week.

The announcement comes a day after the United Nations projected that the radioactive plume coming from failed Japanese reactors could come to across the Pacific by the end of the week.

TRACK THE PLUME LIVE

The forecast explained that the plume will lose radioactive force as it travels and may not even be detectable by the time it reaches Southern California.

The projection, made by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna, is based on patterns of Pacific winds and gives no information about actual radiation levels. It is likely to change if the weather shifts over the next few days.

The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 also made its way to the West Coast in 10 days, but radiation levels were too low to register.

In the case that the plumes do make it ashore, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said it will deploy additional electronic monitors to measure radiation levels in the air.

The monitors, which detect gamma radiation and radioactive particles, will be set up in "parts of the Western U.S. and U.S. territories," the agency said in a statement.

But the agency is refusing to say exactly where those monitors will be placed.

The EPA has 124 air monitors, which provide hourly readings, already in place in its "Rad-Net" system to measure radiation. There are already 12 stationed across California, including Los Angeles, Riverside, Anaheim, San Bernardino and San Diego. Many of these sampling stations have been in place since the 1950s. The monitoring system was upgraded in the wake of 9/11.

For a live look at a radiation monitor at the offices of Enviroreporter.com in Santa Monica log into http://www.enviroreporter.com/

South Coast Air Quality Management District - where you can monitor radiation level updates:

http://aqmd.gov/

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's web site:
www.nrc.gov