There Plus Radiation News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Well, that's there plus radiation. so now these guys have to watch their dosimeter as well. i guess the problems are really exacerbated by the darkness and the rubble and the question is when you get to a spot where you have to be like near the fuel pool, you have very limited stay time. maybe you can stay ten minutes, maybe five, i hired employees that could only stay on the job for three minutes before they exceeded their personnel exposure so you get all suited up and do all that maybe you can do three to five minutes' worth of work. >> sharon, if you could only do that amount of work and w...

Could get into the water. there's been concern about that or get into the food. there's been concern about that, as well so how it all sort of interplays in the human body, it starts to compound. your question, i think the point you're alluding to is very valid here. if it continues or the levels go up then i think you start getting into some real concerns about longer-term radiation risks and, john, for just one second let me distinguish acute or short-term risks versus long term. short-term risks is what everyone is focused on that's from extremely high levels much higher than we're see at a...

>> there's about 180 of them. there were only 50 for awhile. about the people who are the heroes, attempting to be greater heroes in that complex and they are working trying to cool the reactors. what about the radiation they're exposed to? >> reporter: it's kind of heartbreaking to think about, john. you know, we don't know the levels inside the plant. you can start to do math. calculate how much shielding is in the plant and figure out the levels are this high outside the plant they must be higher, much higher inside the plant so these people are exposed. they potentially are being exposed t...

Doing this work, they may be looking at dosimeters and recognizing how much they're getting. it is remarkable work by people who know just how grave these risks are. >> invaluable perspective and context from our dr. sanjay gupta. thanks. another worry is where the global winds will carry this radiation. so far they have been light blowing from the west out to the sea. if they become stronger computer models and you can watch it play out. they show the current looping around the world would take more than three days to reach the west coast. that's one reason why experts say any radiation tha...

>> well, i actually i like what president merkel did over in germany and the plants that were -- they have several of this design and she said, let's shut them down for a couple of months. it's not a big deal this time of year. it's the lowest time of load for the year. if you shut them down in march and april and early may it doesn't affect it. there's plenty of power on the grid so it wouldn't hurt america to do that and it might allow us to take a breath and look at these plants objectively and see what we can do to improve them. >> a lot more ground to cover. we'll ask arnie and sharon to ...