Fukushima Radiation Really IS Expected To Hit Southern California!

An article in the New York Times today reports a United Nations forecast of the path of radiation from the crippled Fukushima Nuclear Plant in Japan, which:

shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday.

Health and nuclear experts emphasize that radiation in the plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States, even if hints of it are ultimately detectable. In a similar way, radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 spread around the globe and reached the West Coast of the United States in 10 days, its levels measurable but minuscule.

The projection, by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, an arm of the United Nations in Vienna, gives no information about actual radiation levels but only shows how a radioactive plume would probably move and disperse.

All experts agreed that the threat of harmful radiation exposure was minimal, if not nonexistent. We suppose that's reassuring, but color us a little skeptical; our respective governments--and their experts--have a knack for not telling us exactly everything we need to know, when we need to know it. At least the Environmental Protection Agency is setting up additional radiation monitoring in the Western U.S., and, at least as of March 16, radiation levels in San Diego were normal (however, keep in mind that the radioactivity, according to the article above, would hit on Friday March 18, if it hits at all).

What is distinctly not reassuring is reports that the Japanese are losing control of the situation:

Officials around the world are increasingly concerned that Japan's mounting nuclear disaster is out of control. . . . Japanese military helicopters are today dumping tons of seawater on the plant in a desperate bid to avert a nuclear meltdown, but CBS News notes that TV footage shows the wind apparently causing much of the water to disperse. Australia's ABC News adds that the last-ditch attempt to cool the reactors appears to have had no major effect, with only two of the four drops hitting their mark. . . . "The next 48 hours will be decisive."

We're not out of the woods yet.