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.

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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.

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Source: Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance

Overview