Persuasive Cold Water Crisis

LOS ANGELES - California is closely watching the crisis at a Japanese nuclear plant, but officials downplayed the threat that a radioactive cloud blown across the Pacific could pose for the US West Coast. While radioactivity could reach the United States from the quake-hit Fukushima plant, the levels would not be high enough to cause major health problems, said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Some experts disagreed, notably pointing to the west-east jet stream, but NRC -- which was asked by Japan on Monday to send nuclear experts to deal with the crisis -- said even the Pacific island state of Hawaii faced little risk. "Right now it's quite possible that there could be some radiation floating over the United States. But we don't think that it would be particularly harmful... even in a worst case scenario," spokesman David McIntyre told AFP. The
"The great majority of these runs have taken plumes of radioactivity emitted from Japan's east coast eastwards over the Pacific, with the plumes staying over water for at least five days," said meteorologist Jeff Masters. "It is highly unlikely that any radiation capable of causing harm to people will be left in atmosphere after seven days and 2000+ miles of travel," added Masters, founder of the Weather Underground online weather forecasting service. "Even the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which had a far more serious release of radioactivity, was unable to spread significant contamination more than about 1,000 miles," he said. The NCR spokesman declined to comment in depth on possible scenarios for how quickly or at what levels radioactivity could reach the US mainland. "Right now the government as a whole has people looking at the situation and asking these questions. We don't have the answers yet. We don't have anything that we can say publicly right