Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - Even with alert levels at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant raised to level 5, the Philippines remains safe from a nuclear threat, Secretary Mario Montejo of the Department of Science and Technology (DoST) has said.
Montejo said Philippine nuclear engineers and experts had assured Filipinos the country would not be affected by the catastrophe at the Japanese power plant.
"The DoST and its concerned agencies are continuously monitoring all indicators in the country and we emphasize: Let us be calm. There is no reason to be alarmed, the Philippines is under no threat," he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI) on Saturday said there was still no reason to think that the radiological plume from Japan would move toward the Philippines.
"Daily modeling studies indicate that the radiological plume is in the Pacific Coast direction, northeast of Japan, and therefore will not affect the Philippines in the next three days," it said in its bulletin on Saturday.
It also said that as of 11 a.m., radiation levels in the country were at 80 to 125 nanoSievert per hour. The general public could be safely exposed to as much as 1 milliSievert in a year.
The alert level at the Fukushima plant has been raised from level four to five on a seven-point international scale for nuclear accidents. Level 5 refers to "an accident with wider consequences." It is two levels below the 1986 Chernobyl accident and is on the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that the climb to level 5 shows that the situation at the Fukushima plant is not stable, but it is under control and not worsening.
Montejo said Filipinos in Japan who are outside the evacuation zone have no cause for worry. Radiation levels in Tokyo, which is 200 kilometers from Fukushima, also remain normal.
"The 30-km radius evacuation zone remains, indicating that the radiation effect continues to be contained within that area," he said.
The PNRI has been keeping tabs on radiation levels in the country, while the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) has been keeping track of weather patterns, he added.
The PNRI earlier said that even in a "worst case scenario," there would be no harmful radiation in the Philippines.
