Low Radioactivity Seen Heading towards N. America

Low concentrations of radioactive particles are heading eastwards from Japan's disaster-hit nuclear power plant and are expected to reach North America in days, a Swedish official said on Thursday.

Lars-Erik De Geer, research director at the Swedish Defence Research Institute, a government agency, was citing data from a network of international monitoring stations established to detect signs of any nuclear weapons tests.

Stressing that the levels were not dangerous for people, he predicted the particles would continue across the Atlantic and eventually also reach Europe.

"It is not something you see normally," he said by phone from Stockholm. But, "it is not high from any danger point of view."

He said he was convinced it would eventually be detected over the whole northern hemisphere.

"It is only a question of very, very low activities so it is nothing for people to worry about," De Geer said.

"In the past when they had nuclear weapons tests in China ... then there were similar clouds all the time without anybody caring about it at all," he said.

Before he spoke, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission advised any Americans living near Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to move at least 50 miles (80 km) away but it played down the risks of contamination to the United States.

"All the available information continues to indicate Hawaii, Alaska, the U.S. Territories and the U.S. West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity," it said in a statement on Wednesday.

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