[quote=KSMountain]@ILoveRegulation –
Are you able to discuss issues and ideas dispassionately? Can you debate without going ad hominem almost immediately?
For the record (replying to an earlier allegation), I love facts. I like to go to actual source references rather than rely on *anyone* else’s (of any political persuasion) regurgitated hyperbolic pablum.
Now, can we get back to the OT?
I think it is interesting that currently evidently the Japanese are concerned most about reactor 3 while the Americans are most concerned about the spent fuel pool of reactor 4. There is going to be power there soon. Maybe they will be able to cool 4’s pool once they have power. But If that pool has a leak then it will be interesting times.
Still there is a lot of ingenuity in the world cadre of engineers and I have faith the situation will ultimately be resolved. That may not be as thrilling or fun to wax cataclysmic about, but folks aren’t going to just give up. Watch and see.[/quote]
Their concern about the #3 reactor might be due to this:
“We can never say never,” Lyman said. “My judgment is that there will probably be measurable radiation, but except for a few hot spots it is not something we should really worry about.”
Key federal officials involved in the Radnet monitoring program have so far not disclosed their predictions for U.S. radioactive exposure. The projections are being developed by the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center operated at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California. The center, part of the Energy Department, uses sophisticated models on supercomputers to project the movement of radioactive particles and other toxic substances through the atmosphere.
However, a computer model of atmospheric movements developed by the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy shows that the Fukushima plumes could travel across the Pacific, though the levels of radioactivity that could reach the West Coast of the U.S. remain unclear.
It appears that all of the models, however, are not based on measurements of radioactivity at the source and a projection of actual radioactive fallout in the U.S., but rather project a relative scale of radioactivity. Since Japanese authorities have said little about the amount of the releases at Fukushima, nobody can say how much radioactivity will hit California.
Of particular concern, however, is radiation emanating from Fukushima’s No. 3 reactor. That reactor uses plutonium fuel, which poses a special health risk even in small quantities if the fallout were to reach U.S. shores.
