For the truly paranoid, this environmental reporter is going to be measuring radiation in Santa Monica starting tomorrow if you want to check.
I've been performing a number of runs of HYSPLIT over past few days, and so far 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 5 days. Some of the plumes move over eastern Siberia, Alaska, Canada, the U.S., and Mexico in 5 - 7 days. Such a long time spent over water will mean that the vast majority of the radioactive particles will settle out of the atmosphere or get caught up in precipitation and rained out. 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 distance. Even the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which had a far more serious release of radioactivity, was unable to spread significant contamination more than about 1000 miles.
Heartland Science Director Jay Lehr was a guest on more than a dozen TV and radio programs today, talking about the crisis at the nuclear power plants in Japan. Tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern, Jay will be on “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.Short version of his message: This is nothing like Chernobyl, and (officially) still qualifies as less serious than Three Mile Island. It was the first “don’t panic” message Jay delivered publicly to the local Fox News station in Chicago on Friday. And others commentators are now repeating it as the MSM starts to catch up to him in its coverage.
You can listen to or download Jay’s appearance on the Sean Hannity Show with the player above. Click here to listen to Jay on the G. Gordon Liddy Show.In what might come as a bit of a surprise to our right-leaning readers, Jay has been on MSNBC twice to talk about this crisis, and might be on again tomorrow. A producer for MSNBC said Jay was “just a fantastic guest.”