(Link to .pdf file)

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/fullmaps_sa.nsf/luFullMap/B210036541A6D6CD8525785400721ABB/$File/map.pdf?OpenElement

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/RKRR-8EYSAN?OpenDocument&rc=3&cc=jpn 

Japan has raised the severity rating of its nuclear disaster, as firefighters continue efforts to cool highly radioactive fuel rods at a nuclear reactor complex crippled by last week's earthquake and tsunami.

Japan on Friday increased the severity of the crisis at the Fukushima site from 4 to 5 on a 7-point international nuclear event scale. 

Firefighters are dousing water on damaged reactor buildings with powerful hoses.  But they have to limit their time inside the complex due to the high radiation levels. 

Japanese engineers also are extending an emergency power cable to the nuclear reactor complex.  A steady supply of power could enable workers at the Fukushima plant to get water pumps working again. 

For More Information:

Winds passing over Japan's stricken nuclear power plant are reaching California and moving inland, but health experts say the plumes pose no danger to the public.

There is mounting alarm in the public's mind as news continues of explosions and loss of reactor cooling water at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, and its intensely radioactive fuel rods.

But winds from Japan have been blowing eastward across the Pacific at altitudes four to five miles high, and are "continually mixing with the upper atmosphere," said Kenneth Bowman, a noted atmospheric physicist at Texas A&M University and an expert on computer-based modeling of wind behavior.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/18/MNGU1IDTMQ.DTL

Radiation detectors at Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago O’Hare airports were triggered when passengers from flights that started in Tokyo passed through customs, the New York Post reported.

Tokyo Passengers Trigger U.S. Airport Detectors, N.Y. Post Says
By Alan Purkiss -

Mar 17, 2011 1:08 AM CT

Tests at Dallas-Fort Worth indicated low radiation levels in travelers’ luggage and in the aircraft’s cabin filtration system; no passengers were quarantined, the newspaper said.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alan Purkiss at ***@***.***

Details of the incident at O’Hare weren’t immediately clear, the Post said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/tokyo-passengers-trigger-u-s-airport-detectors-n-y-post-says.html 

Fox News With: Neil Cavuto

Special Guests | Jim Berkland - Former USGS Geologist

CAVUTO: California, Oregon or whatever, would that mean? What type of quake or disturbance or disruption would that be?

Austria's Federal Ministry for Science and Research has released this map showing radioactive material from the disaster in Japan moving across the Pacific Ocean toward California.

As The Times' Ralph Vartabedian reported, small amounts of radioactive isotopes from the quake-crippled Japanese nuclear power plant are being blown toward North America. Though they could reach California by Friday, officials said they see no health danger and stressed that any radiation reaching here would be well within safe limits.

Federal officials are monitoring radiation levels in places such as Anaheim, Bakersfield and Eureka.

Read more...

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as submitted by David Hastings

Forecast for Plume's Path Is a Function of Wind and Weather

As as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wrote last December:

About a third of the airborne lead particles recently collected at two sites in the San Francisco Bay Area came from Asia, a finding that underscores the far-flung impacts of air pollution and heralds a new way to learn more about its journey across vast distances.

In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the California Air Resources Board tracked variations in the amount of lead transported across the Pacific over time.

It's well known that particles and other aerosols cover long distances through the Earth's atmosphere. But the details of this transport, such as that of the lead particles' 7,000-mile journey from the smokestacks of China to the west coast of North America, are largely unknown.

From 2001:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=1352

From 2010:

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2010/12/01/lead-isotopes-air-pollution/

From 1998:

More info at the SFSU Meteorolog page.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes there is no radiation danger to U.S. territory from the nuclear reactor disaster Japan, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said on Thursday.

"We don't see any concern for radiation levels that could be harmful here in the the United States or any of the U.S. territories," he told reporters. He said NRC recommended evacuating areas within 50 miles of Japan's stricken reactor as a prudent precaution.

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WASHINGTON » President Barack Obama is defending nuclear power as an important source of energy in the U.S., even as new questions are raised about its safety following radiation leaks from an earthquake- and tsunami-damaged nuclear plant in Japan.

Obama also told a Pittsburgh TV station that he has been assured that Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast will not be affected by radiation released from the damaged nuclear plant in Japan.

Read more...