FEBRUARY MARCH 1999 
STORIES
FSU PHYSICISTS MONITOR THE AIR
By Mark Riordan
FSU Communications Group
Cuba's first nuclear reactor is scheduled to go online in December 2000, and Florida State nuclear physicists will be ready to detect any radiation leaks that might come from the plant so close to Florida.
In 1986, when the Chernobyl reactor disaster occurred in the Ukraine, FSU researchers found small amounts of the nuclear pollution in Tallahassee.
Much closer to home, the nuclear plans in Cuba have inspired a reaction in Florida: The Caribbean Radiation Early Warning System.
FSU's nuclear physicists will start by measuring the radiation levels in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean for two years. Those measurements will be a baseline to compare with any changes that come from Cuba.
FSU nuclear physicists, in conjunction with the Pacific-Sierra Research Corp., will conduct continuous analyses of the air around the region for any signs of radiation leaking from the plant.
The physicists working on the project, led by Samuel Tabor, are showing no panic about the danger of a nuclear plant in Cuba.
"This is a safety issue," said physics department Chairman Kirby Kemper. "We don't anticipate any problems."
As a matter of course in the United States, Kemper said, "we mandate continuous testing around all of our sites including hospitals, university labs and power plants."
But there may be a danger, Kemper noted, if the Russian-designed plant is not well built.
It is under construction in Juragua, Cuba, about 185 miles southeast of Havana. Originally begun in the early '90s, construction was halted in 1992 when money ran out. If built in the United States, the plant would cost between $1 billion and $2 billion. Kemper said that a nuclear reactor that size should produce 65 to 70 percent of the island's power needs.
The design of the plant is basically safe, Kemper said. What concerns him and other scientists most is the break in construction and future cost-cutting that may result.
"We want to know whether they're building this on the cheap," he said. "We're concerned with the routine things that could go wrong."
If something does go wrong, Tabor said, the best precaution for Floridians or anyone else in the path of the radiation plumes is to simply stay inside.
"Volcanoes spew all sorts of radioactive material into the atmosphere," he said. "Any radiation leaks from the Cuban plant, like those from the volcanoes, will blow over."
The project will include six field stations to collect air samples scattered throughout Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean, meteorological modeling to predict air currents, satellite hookups between the field stations and FSU, and a direct, high-powered Internet connection to Pacific-Sierra, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency.
According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predictions, Caribbean winds most likely would blow any radiation leaks northward from Cuba across the Florida Panhandle to Texas and possibly up the east coast to Washington, D.C. Furthermore, the NOAA models show that the air plumes would hit the United States within 24 hours. Tabor and his team of FSU staff and students will be using sophisticated, high resolution gamma-ray spectrometers to measure the Cesium 137, Iodine 131 and Strontium 90 - the radioisotopes of concern in nuclear reactions - in the air around the region.