Just because the Fukushima Daiichi power plant's Unit 1 in Okumamachi, Fukushima prefecture, Japan is located some 4500 miles to the west from Portland, Oregon doesn't mean that the west coast won't be in the path of Japan's radioactive fallout. Most vulnerable states appears to be Washington, Oregon and California that may be first in line to see the effects of a radioactive fallout should Japan experience a catastrophic meltdown. For the rainy west coast radioactive materials could come down mostly in the form of rain and snow. With this scenario there is a concern on how it could affect water, agriculture and even livestock such as cattle for their milk.
Using an online jet stream animation page you can see where the upper 300 mb jet stream fluctuated over the last 2 to 20 days. Just click on "20 days" worth of animation and set it at a 6 hour interval. And then click on "Build Animation" button to see the results the flow of the upper level jet stream.
The only other lesson we can learn from this is the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion and fallout and its global radiation pattern and what the United States could expect should a catastrophic meltdown occur over at Japan. Although Ryohei Shiomi, an official with Japan's nuclear safety commission, said that even with a meltdown, it wouldn't affect people outside a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius. Although that could change should the situation deteriorates and becomes catastrophic. Perhaps Japan is attempting to down play this seriousness?
From one commenter:
The explosion is a very very bad sign. They are claiming that they don't know if the the reactor core has been damaged. That unfortunately isn't a true statement they know perfectly well it has been breached. They have announced elevated levels of Cesium in the air. They are talking about "radiation leakage". That is misleading, Cesium 135 and 137 are isotopes that are byproducts of the fission reactor using Uranium 235 a a primary fuel. Cesium isotopes can only come from the reactor core which means it has been breached. In a best case they are deliberately venting the reactor vessel to try and keep the damping control rods from collapsing. In a worst case scenario the control rods have collapsed and they have a full scale runaway reactor that will start to produce heat again with no cooling system. If that is the case it can only end one way. A complete coreLet's hope not. And this could be another "Chernobyl disaster" in the making. And it could be even worse.
breach that will allow the core to fall down into the ground water. When that happens the molten sodium and fission mass will cause a massive explosion throwing cubic kilometers of steam containing Cesium, Uranium 235 and perhaps worst of all Plutonium 239 up into the atmosphere, all the way up into the jet stream. Lets all hope that doesn't happen.
2 comments:
I've been reading up on this in other articles and they're saying that 500 mile radius is most likely to be affected. USA is 6K miles from Japan and any radiation fallout isn't really going to make much of a difference because it would be diluted. Any truth to that?
Prayers and thoughts to everyone affected by the earthquake in Japan. It's un-F-believable. I didn't see any reports of people trying to outrun the Tsunami but, as I watched 45 min after the quake hit, I saw little people (they appeared to be little from the shot taken by an helicopter) abandoning their vehicles (they were bumper to bumper) and running. By the looks of it, they don't have time to get away from it. Sad.
Year ago in the 1970s I was part of a group that tried to stop the construction of the last US nuke plant in Seabrook, NH. I remember the statistics used to be that a true meltdown would affect every living creature. I wonder how much truth there is to that? Anyone know the answer?
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