The odds a nuclear reactor will explode in Japan are minimal, and citizens there face slim chance of radiation side effects, according to the UNM section of the American Nuclear Society.
“Everything indicates that the efforts to keep the reactors and spent fuel cool using sea water are succeeding,” ANS representative Margaret Root said. “While there is still some release of radiation, the quantities are minimal and safe, particularly since the area around the plant has been evacuated.”
UNM ANS works to help inform the public about nuclear science and engineering and help nuclear engineering students learn and connect with other people in the industry. The group will host a panel discussion at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History on Saturday at 1:30 p.m.
Root said small levels of iodine and cesium have spread into the atmosphere and concedes that water in the area has some level of radiation. She said people have been advised to not eat fish or drink water from the contaminated area in Japan.
“It is difficult to say exactly when those waters will be open to fishing again,” Root said.
Some milk has also been contaminated, but Peter Caracappa, a health physicist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said you would have to drink 58,000 glasses of contaminated milk to increase chances of getting cancer by just 4 percent.
Root said most media coverage has been blown out of proportion and fueled fears the reactor could blow up.
“When hydrogen gas, which was generated by a chemical reaction in the core, hit the air, a spark was all that was necessary to ignite it and cause an explosion,” she said. “At no point were the reactors a danger comparable to the earthquake, tsunami or aftershocks.”
Members from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a government body in charge of reactor safety, and members from Sandia National Laboratories have gone to Japan to give consultation, Root said.
“Even at its worst moments, the situation in Japan never reached the scale of Chernobyl accident in Russia,” she said.
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