Risks to US from Japanese Power Plant Seen as Low
This article published with the permission from Medpage Today.
By John Gever, Senior Editor, Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, Todd Neale, Staff Writer, Joyce Frieden, News Editor, MedPage Today
MedPage Today took a look at the risks that radiation leaks from the Japanese plants may pose to the US, whether plants here may be vulnerable to natural disasters, and what our level of medical preparedness is.
The general consensus among our sources: The risk is low.
(SeniorWomen.com's Editor's Note: We would recommend that readers keep up to date, at least with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website. You may want to choose a subscription from the site's email choices. And, from C-Span, a hearing from today, the 16th, Congress Looks at Nuclear Safety and Crisis in Japan.
Will Radiation from Japan Threaten the US?
Experts contacted by MedPage Today generally agreed that radioactive particles will eventually reach the U.S., but at levels too low to measurably affect people's health.
In an update today [March 14, 2011], the International Atomic Energy Agency said winds have been blowing eastward from the Japanese coast — toward the US and Canada — in a pattern expected to continue for the next three days.
But the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said it is unlikely that harmful levels of radiation leaking from Japanese reactors will reach any part of the US, including Hawaii, Alaska, and various territories in the Pacific, considering the vast distances between Japan and those areas.
Reports indicate that any release of radioactive materials has been largely confined, and that explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have not breached their outwardmost containment buildings.
James Thrall, MD, radiologist-in-chief at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and president of the American College of Radiology, told MedPage Today that the chances of a consequential radiation exposure from the Japanese disaster anywhere in the US is "essentially zero."
He noted, however, that radiation detectors are so sensitive that they will likely be able to measure even minute levels of radioactivity from Japan on US soil.
That's how the world knew about the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which occurred in what is now Ukraine, before Soviet government officials admitted it had occurred, according to Eric Hall, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University in New York City.
At Chernobyl, the fuel rods melted through all layers of containment, accompanied by several explosions.