U.S. deploys more radiation detectors on Hawaii, other U.S. islands

[villager]

Source: Reuters

U.S. deploys more radiation detectors on U.S. islands


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is deploying additional radiation monitors on Hawaii and other U.S. islands even though it does not expect harmful levels of radiation from damaged Japanese nuclear power plants to reach U.S. soil, environmental regulators said.

The Environmental Protection Agency without fanfare posted a notice on its website on Tuesday of plans to "work with its federal partners to deploy additional monitoring capabilities to parts of the western U.S. and U.S. territories."

A Democratic Congressional aide on Wednesday told Reuters that additional monitors will be dispatched to the Aleutian Islands, Guam, a U.S. territory, and the state of Hawaii.

These monitors will augment the more than 100 monitors already in place in all 50 U.S. states, according to the aide, who asked not to be identified.

EPA officials were not immediately available for comment.

<snip>



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-nuclear-usa-detectors-idUSTRE72F8BY20110316?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

[abqmufc]

1. Good to see the nation's mobile monitors deployed....

[Poll_Blind]

2. Good! Even better if they actually tell us what the readings are!

PB

[abqmufc]

3. If data is real time I'll provide the link, in the meantime....

if you've not seen this, let me direct you to the Austrian's Weather Service modeling of CS-137 releases.....

http://www.zamg.ac.at/aktuell/index.php?seite=1&artikel=ZAMG_2011-03-15GMT08%3A26

ZentralAnstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG; Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics) in Austria is well respected; it is their NOAA. This is a new model run that I hadn't seen yet. The last one I've seen had the plume trajectory be farther north, squarely hitting the Alutians and portions of southern Alaska. This model run places the plume trajectory significantly farther south towards central Californian coast. Watch out, San Francisco! But in this model run, the level of contamination reaching the US is a whole lot lower than the one I've seen, which didn't get dispersed as much, so the fall-out's plume tail dissipating somewhere around Manitoba/North Dakota/Minnesota/NW Ontario. In this run, the plume not only changes the amount of contaminants being released, but the fall-out plume is also dispersed to a point where what arrives would be very low levels.

Since the numerous nuclear weapons testing from the 1940 through the 1960, we now have trace levels of Americium in our atmosphere, easily detected in any speciated PM2.5 sampling.

The model run is just for Cs-137, which has a half-life of about 30 years. If any great quantities of Cs-137 contaminates a region, it will make the calibration and safety checks of nuclear-detection instruments difficult, as they depend on Cs-137. Worse, unlike Uranium, Caesium is water-soluble, and taken up by organisms as part of the metal salts.

A friend of mine explained all this to me. He has been running air quality monitors for a federally recognized Indian Tribe for decades.....he knows his stuff, a true 'air-head' as we say.


I've not seen any legit models of other isotopes or radioactive pollutants or by-products.