Radiation threat to U.S. minimal | Philly | 03/14/2011

Japan's nightmare continues, with death tolls and damage estimates rising, but fears that the environmental fallout of the catastrophe would ripple to the United States are ebbing.

Based on current wind forecasts, it could take up to a week for any of the plumes from the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiishi nuclear plant to reach North America, says Jeff Masters, meteorologist with the popular Weather Underground site.

By then, he said, most of the radioactive particles would have settled or been rained out of the atmosphere.

He points out that the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, in what is now the Urkraine was a far-more intense nuclear disaster but didn't export damaging radioactive material more than 1,000 miles.

Incidentally, AIR Worldwide, the insurance catastrophe-modeling concern in New England, estimates up to $35 billion in insured losses as a result of the quake, but that number is likely to be a rapidly moving target.

Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, resulted in about $65 billion in insured losses.

 

via philly.com