Word: fallout
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JAPAN. Despite assurances that winds would carry the radiation past them, the Japanese found fallout last week throughout their country. Slight amounts were detected in sources ranging from Tokyo rainwater to fresh milk. Though the government advised people that no danger existed, demand for powdered milk soared, and some stores ran out of it. "We are not going to drink milk as long as it is contaminated," said one frightened homemaker. Yet most Japanese showed little concern. "There is no sense of a growing crisis here," said Noriaki Hosokawa, 32, a Tokyo importer of windsurfing equipment. "Not a single friend...
...this day, however, opinion remains divided as to the real cause of the disaster. Scientists at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico, for example, initially attributed the contamination to fallout from nuclear- weapons testing at Novaya Zemlya, more than 1,000 miles to the north. In 1982, they completed a full survey that confirmed the existence of the devastated area, but they still contested Medvedev's explanation. There was probably never any dramatic nuclear explosion, they argued, but merely a series of minor incidents resulting from the carelessness of Soviet authorities...
While atomic-energy officials around the world were trying to escape the political fallout from the Chernobyl accident, some of their American colleagues were fearful that the tragedy could doom their industry for years, perhaps even decades, to come. The U.S. industry has long been in deep trouble, and now it has to prepare for new attacks on several fronts...
...fallout caused an international uproar against the Soviet Union for its lax safety measures and its concealment of the fact that the dangerous radiation was floating toward neighboring countries. Moreover, the accident seemed certain to put the worldwide use of nuclear power under still sharper attacks. In West Germany, the antinuclear Greens quickly staged protest rallies under banners bearing the slogan CHERNOBYL IS EVERYWHERE...
...expect any significant health effects in the United States," said Sheldon Meyers, acting director of the Environmental Protection Agency's office of radiation programs. Still, the U.S. is taking no chances. The EPA increased its measurement of airborne particulates from twice a week to daily in order to spot fallout quickly...