A model created by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization and obtained by the New York Times.
The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory B. Jaczko, said Monday that the plume posed no danger to the United States. “You just aren’t going to have any radiological material that, by the time it traveled those large distances, could present any risk to the American public,” he said in a White House briefing.
Mr. Jaczko was asked if the meltdown of a core of one of the reactors would increase the chance of harmful radiation reaching Hawaii or the West Coast.
“I don’t want to speculate on various scenarios,” he replied. “But based on the design and the distances involved, it is very unlikely that there would be any harmful impacts.”
Do people understand that even if a core meltdown occurred, it still would have to breach the containment vessel, and the primary containment chamber, for highly radioactive materials to even be exposed in the air?
None of those things has happened to the reactor cores in Japan.
There has been fuel rod damage, specifically the outer cladding of the fuel rod oxidized producing tremendous amounts of hydrogen. That happened when the back up pumps failed so no water was being injected into the containment vessel and the decay heat became too great.
But once they switched to the mobile pumps they were able to get saltwater in to cool down the fuel rods and things started to stabilize.
And with every day that passes it becomes more and more remote that a core meltdown in the containment vessel is even possible. I would even guess that all three reactors are close to reaching cold shutdown.