joining me with the latest are jay laar from the heartland institute and nuclear safety consultant margaret harding. jay, i m looking at not only the contamination story of the uss reagan crewmembers. this is a race against time. japan s frantic efforts to avoid a meltdown. some day we were told not to breathe the air, scary. how realistic is this threat? sean, it is not at all realistic. i can tell you with the utmost confidence there will not be a health impact of anything that is going on at the fukushima power plant. a meltdown, people interpret it as disaster, explosion, destruction like an atomic bomb that is not true. a meltdown just means the cooling of the rods has failed. the temperature is higher than can be controlled in order to
a problem. even to get people concerned thinking there might be, because anything could happen, is absolutely wrong. there is really zero chance that any radiation is going to move out, even if the outer containment moved from japan to the united states and created any health problem. sean: why do you say that considering the amount of radiation we are talking about would be significant? i say that because i ve studied every nuclear disaster and incident since the first nautilus submarine launched in the 50s in pennsylvania nuclear power plant was constructed. i ve study every one of these. the worst-case was chernobyl. a level 7 disaster in which there was no containment. i a total explosion of the whole plant. everything went up in the air. radiation clouds that traveled very far distance in the an
out to sea. the question is, will we see any kind of explosion that will lift the debris higher up in the atmosphere? if you get an lesion here up higher into the atmosphere the wind bring it more to the east. you could have more of a problem. if you think back to the nuclear bomb tests in the pacific. back through the 40s, 50s, into the 60s. there was a tremendous amount of radioactive material put into the atmosphere because those bombs reached heights of over 60,000 feet with the debris. that aided that movement of the nuclear waste around the globe. there was results of it everywhere around the world. in terms of that. i think when you look at the overall scope you need something to really push it higher up in the atmosphere before it has a chance to make it back to the united states. it is going to be in such a dilute form it would seem
relatively benign. sean: you remember after chernobyl, a lot of countries because there was such or so itg2g was believed, turned out o be right, radioactive clouds moving into other countries there was great anger and resentment. what was the fall out of that at the time because it traveled many, many thousands of miles. certainly, the worst was in an area almost the size of florida. remember, that was also because there was explosion and tremendous steam clouds pushed off into the atmosphere with the subsequent fires. without containment that launched. if we saw the same thing in japan which now as you hear the experts saying it doesn t seem that likely, then we could see more stuff scattered about the atmosphere. given prevailing winds, typically that would be over the pacific for a period of time. the likelihood of having direct effect on the united states seems relatively small. sean: thanks for being with us, appreciate it.
sean: tonight fears of a catastrophic meltdown at a japanese power plant are rising in the wake of the quake a series of explosions crippled efforts to reduce the temperature in the reactors. the latest explosion occurred over an hour ago. seawater is being used to cool the rods. monday night the water level dropped and the rods were exposed. this poses serious health risks and increases the chances of a melt done. we learned crewmembers of the uss reagan were exposed to radiation. the explosion occurred when u.s. helicopters through through a cloud of radioactive dust. it sailors are being closely monitored. joining me with the latest are