The Federal Environmental Protection Agency has eleven stationary radiation monitors in California. They're part of a system called radnet. In the weeks after the beginning of the nuclear crisis in Japan, only seven of the monitors were working. The EPA also decided not to deploy mobile monitors they have in storage.
DAN HIRSCH: "I'm worried that politics is mixing with public safety."
Dan Hirsch is a lecturer in nuclear policy at UC Santa Cruz.
DAN HIRSCH: "The administration's position in Washington has been to expand the use of nuclear power. And I'm worried that there is concern that this Japanese accident might somehow derail that effort to have those additional tax payer subsidies."
Hirsch says even if all the detectors were online, gaps of
hundreds of miles remain in the system.
But the California Department of Public Health says it has its
own radiation monitoring system and that right now levels remain
completely safe.