Fate of Japan and the Whole World Depends on No. 4 Reactor

[jeff47]

24. Can't happen

In order to contaminate food enough to be dangerous, you need a high concentration of material. But a high concentration limits the area of exposure.

The ~32 million square miles of the northern half of the Pacific is an immense area. And that's just the ocean part of your disaster scenario. Grind up the reactor contents into a fine powder and sprinkle it over that entire area, and you won't reach dangerous concentrations. The area is just too vast and the volume too enormous.

Now, that doesn't mean there can't be localized areas which become too dangerous. I'd be pretty nervous if I was a farmer or fisherman in Japan, for example. And it's not impossible that an absolutely perfect storm could carry radioactive material to the fishery off Alaska. But that same storm won't be able to reach "Korea, Taiwan, parts of China, the Western parts of Canada and the U.S". Contaminating each of those locations would require their own "perfect storm", which would prevent exposure to the other areas.