Scientists Project Path of Radiation Plume
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday.

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 ten 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 likely 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 the Ukraine began spewing radiation.

I n 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.”

Could the source for the article be provided?

I wasn't hoping anything

Totally ridiculous scaremongering from this useless organization.  There is no way that the regular winds will carry anything here this fast, they're moving at 30 km an hour; and there hasn't yet been an explosion powerful enough to carry particles into the jet stream.  So either they're lying or they're incompetent, but then we already knew that.

I think people have some subconscious desire to see Los Angeles burn and that this desire made Hollywood lots of money back in the 70's with their disaster films.  Why are they not saying "Radioactive plume will reach Seattle by Friday" or "Radioactive plume will reach Anchorage by Friday," because both are closer than Los Angeles.

It is ironic that, at the beginning of this Crisis, the heretical CS accused the blasphemer Raoul of the same scaremongering.  :smoke-pot: :wine-drinking:

Totally ridiculous scaremongering from this useless organization.  There is no way that the regular winds will carry anything here this fast, they're moving at 30 km an hour; and there hasn't yet been an explosion powerful enough to carry particles into the jet stream.  So either they're lying or they're incompetent, but then we already knew that.

I think people have some subconscious desire to see Los Angeles burn and that this desire made Hollywood lots of money back in the 70's with their disaster films.  Why are they not saying "Radioactive plume will reach Seattle by Friday" or "Radioactive plume will reach Anchorage by Friday," because both are closer than Los Angeles.

It depends on how high the contaminated particles end-up in the atmosphere.  Smoke and dust from the fires will push the particles up into the atmosphere, where the winds are much faster.  Then, it depends on how any particular "cloud" remains intact on its journey eastward.  Then, how is any particular individual exposed to those contaminated particles.  Finally, what is the duration of the exposure.  This is why you, as a patient in a dentist's office can have your teeth x-rayed, but the technician, who is being exposed to less than what you are being exposed to, will always step behind a shielded screen.  Radiation exposure is a cuмulative effect.

Totally ridiculous scaremongering from this useless organization.

Why do you say that ?

It's pretty clear that the NYT article clearly states that:

"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."

Anyone old enough and with good enough memory will recall that former nuclear tests done in the Pacific were detectable for the trace amount of radio-activity in the air, but it was in harmless amount.

  It's not prudent to do absolutely no research and then panic.  My prudence in this case consists of research.  The ones who are wasting $140 on potassium iodine pills that have dangerous side effects are the ones acting out of fear.

All that has exploded, due to hydrogen, is part of the building structure.  So there are most likely no particles in the jet stream except for maybe a trace amount, which would almost certainly not reach Los Angeles or anywhere else.  

This is not a "plume," because it was not a reactor explosion, like at Chernobyl.  Calling it a "plume" is junk science using harum-scarum Chernobyl-like terminology, before anything remotely Chernobyl-like has even happened!  

Meanwhile, the regular winds, which are changing almost every day, move at about 30 km an hour, more or less.  We are 5,400 miles away.  Divide 5,400 by 30.  That's 180 days.  Assuming these winds will travel at a consistent speed, it will take a little longer than Friday for Los Angeles to see even a minor amount of radioactive dust...

"It's pretty clear that the NYT article clearly states that:

"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..."

There is no plume, that right there is a hysterical invention.  Look at how the "experts" are not named in this article.  It is true that eventually some dust will get here, but it will get all over the world.  "RADIOACTIVE PLUME WILL REACH LOS ANGELES BY FRIDAY" is alarmist and irresponsible, even if the body of the article is more moderate.

It does Catholics no favors to just believe whatever they read because it's bad.  This is just the opposite extreme from the "sheeple" who believe the mainstream press about 9/11 and things like that.  How do you know Alex Jones doesn't just want to sell you Berkey Water Filters, why do people assume he is disinterested?  The UN is worse, it's just Satanic.