For those concerned about the reports of contaminated milk and radioactive rain, the levels are far, far below anything that should be on your personal worry list at this time. Perhaps that could change, but something would have to materially deteriorate at the Fukushima plant complex before I would devote much time to that here in the Americas.
And even if there were some sort of steam explosion over there, we’d have roughly eight days before that would reach the west coast. I am leery of the last-minute changes to the EPA radnet site and do not trust the site as my first source for radiation readings. The one I check every day is run by amateurs with no particular axe to grind or concerns about scaring the populace, and so I trust it a bit more. You can find it here:
(Source)
If something unusual occurs here at the trusted source above, then I’ll go to the EPA site for confirmation. You might want to bookmark it too.
So far, in terms of radiation in the Americas, there’s nothing of any significance to report, as everything is well within normal background limits as of today.
But in Japan, things are far from over. The idea that there are pockets of criticality is gaining momentum, and we now have some additional data to back it up (as if neutron beams and spiking, not diminishing, radioactive releases didn’t tell us everything we needed to know):
Tepco Workers Threatened by Heat Bursts; Sea Radiation Rises
Tokyo Electric Power Co., the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant’s operator, and Japan’s nuclear watchdog, dismissed the threat of renewed nuclear reactions, three weeks after an earthquake and tsunami triggered an automatic shutdown.
by nate