to be exposed to five rem per year. the laws that limit the american public to receiving doses of 1/10 of one rem per year. so a lot of radiation, certainly a lot more viewed than acceptable, is being emitted from that area. joining us is barry scanlan, former fema official under president clinton. and the weather clanle s bryan norcross, has a lot of information for us on how this particulate can spread. my understanding is that the primary risk is that the atmosphere takes the particulate in and spreads it around. is there a way to assess how much of that is happening and how much of that could happen? well, the issue is getting this radioactive material into the atmosphere or into the water, and then having the
but if they re getting that, they they re monitoring people carefully, and what counts is the total that you get over time and as long as they re not getting a heavy duty dose, you know, they re making the medical equation that these people are going to be okay if they get them out of there in time. as long as this thing doesn t get worse, that s the big concern, is if there s a big explosion if they lose containment, and then followed by an explosion ala chernobyl where the uncontained nuclear material, then in a nonnuclear explosion gets dispersed into the atmosphere, into the water, into the air, then it s a whole different can of worms and before that happens they ve got to get those people to safety because then they would get massive doses of radiation all at once, and that s what the medical team tell us would be extremely dang us. two very quick questions. is there any way to anticipate the frequency with which the
natural processes move it around, downstream, downstream air wise or water wise. good news i the wind is coming in from the northwest, blowing whatever is coming out of that nuclear plant offshore, and that s going to continue for a while. the only way we have to assess what s what amount is in that wind is by their measurements there at the plant. the plant is not putting out radiation, it s putting out some material, especially by way of explosion, but it s pleblowing offshore. tomorrow japanese time through thursday, it s going to be there. downstream it continues to come in from the west and continues offshore. later in the weekend it becomes a little less certain. if they keep it contained, like they have to the extent they have right now with the wind patterns we see for the foreseeable future, there does not appear to be a major risk of whatever comes out spreading to
the surrounding area. however, that s only if they keep it reasonably well contained, as they have so far, reasonably well. barry, if we are so fortunate to be blessed by winds and other variables that don t spread the material around, it doesn t address the on the ground issue of the fact that, again, you ve got four rem per hour coming off of unit four when the u.s. threshold for nuclear workers is five rem per year. is there any contingency, any material, are there jackets, are there coats, anything that the human beings that are close to it that facility, whether they work there or simply can get away from it, can physically put on their body? well, dylan, i think that they ve done the evacuation as best they can in a phased approach, two miles, five miles and further out to get people to safety as best they can. there s potassium iodine tablets
nothing left. there s a few buildings standing. but survives, picking through the debris of what s left and, it s an appalling situation. reality of finding someone alive in the debris is very small. but we obviously continue to search. from the situation on the ground to the danger in the sky, a no-fly zone now over now in effect, i should say, over that nuclear plant to prevent nuclear particles from spreading. radioactive material directly released into the atmosphere during the fire at the unit four reactor was the concern. so how great is the risk? the latest reading around the reactor conplex revealed an exposure rate of what they call four recommend per hour, radiation dose ages measured in units referred to as recommenm. the highest permissible dosage for new u.s. nuclear workers is