[californiadisasters] Japan Radiation Risk to California is Downplayed

Health officials say there is no threat at this time because of the distance nuclear radiation would have to travel. But that is not stopping some from taking their own precautions.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times

March 16, 2011

Within days, nuclear radiation released from Japan's damaged Fukushima reactors could reach California, but experts say the amount that makes its way across the ocean should pose no danger.

"What we're being told is that there is no threat to California at this time," said Mike Sicilia, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health. "It's a matter of distance. Dangerous radioactivity could not cross the 5,000 miles of the Pacific without petering out."

The reassurances came as California and federal health officials opened hotlines to field questions about possible radiation risks. Environmental Protection Agency officials, who monitor radiation levels in air, milk and precipitation, said Tuesday that they plan to send additional staff to the Western U.S.

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Potassium iodide pills — used to prevent the body from absorbing radioactive iodine — have sold out at numerous stores despite warnings from health officials that the pills were unnecessary and could even have harmful side effects.

David McIntyre, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, said his office was working Tuesday with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration "to project the jet stream and the path that any radiation might take."

The Department of Energy activated its atmospheric radioactivity monitoring center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area to create sophisticated computer models of how radioactive releases at Fukushima will spread into the atmosphere, according to a high-ranking energy department official. But he cautioned that "we've got to get good data to put into it for it to be a reliable predictor and basis for people entrusted with public safety to make decisions."

Even without detailed data, some experts said the radiation in Japan posed little danger to the U.S.

Tony VanCuren, an atmospheric scientist with the California Air Resources Board in Sacramento, said it would take a "catastrophic release" of radiation to carry dangerous levels across the ocean, and even then it would take five to 15 days for particles to reach California.

Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, contrasted the problems at Fukushima with the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 in the Ukraine, where a massive blast drove radioactive debris into the air and around the globe.

"If we had multiple Chernobyl-type failures and it did go five to eight miles into the atmosphere and get into the jet stream, it could definitely impact the West Coast of the United States and Canada," Patzert said. "But we're not there yet."

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Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0316-california-radiation-20110316,0,6401831.story

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