Officials Urge Precautions at Yokosuka, Atsugi

WASHINGTON, March 15, 2011 — Offi­cials told per­son­nel in and around Fleet Activ­i­ties Yoko­su­ka and Naval Air Facil­i­ty Atsu­gi in Japan today to lim­it out­door activ­i­ties and to turn off air con­di­tion­ing due to the detec­tion of low lev­els of radioac­tiv­i­ty.
U.S. 7th Fleet offi­cials said sen­si­tive instru­ments aboard the USS George Wash­ing­ton, docked at Yoko­su­ka, detect­ed low lev­els of radioac­tiv­i­ty released from the Fukushi­ma Dai-Ichi nuclear pow­er plant.

Lim­it­ing out­door activ­i­ties and turn­ing off air con­di­tion­ers “are strict­ly pre­cau­tion­ary in nature,” the announce­ment said. “We do not expect that any Unit­ed States fed­er­al radi­a­tion expo­sure lim­its will be exceed­ed even if no pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures are taken.” 

Offi­cials stressed that these are low-lev­el read­ings and the pub­lic is not in danger. 

“Accord­ing to the instru­men­ta­tion at Fleet Activ­i­ty Yoko­su­ka, the lev­els are very low,” said Navy Lt. Antho­ny Fal­vo, 7th Fleet deputy pub­lic affairs offi­cer. “For per­spec­tive, the addi­tion­al radi­a­tion expo­sure over the past 12 hours was about 20 mil­lirems –- which is less than one month’s expo­sure to nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring radi­a­tion that one would get from the sun, the earth or rocks.” 

Offi­cials will con­tin­ue the mon­i­tor­ing pro­gram and will con­stant­ly check the weath­er and pre­vail­ing winds, Fal­vo said. If any­thing changes, base offi­cials will imme­di­ate­ly noti­fy ser­vice mem­bers and their fam­i­lies, he added. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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