While Ball State students studying in Japan were on Spring Break, the country experienced the worst earthquake in the country's history and shocked the nation into crisis. Now they face a difficult question — stay in the country of upheaval or return home.
Student Scott Combs remained in Tokyo for the break, and said he's staying after it ends early next month.
"I plan to continue my studies as well as my adventures over here in Japan," he said in an e-mail. "The people I'm living with are still a bit on edge, but everyone is staying calm."
Lila Ilyas, another Ball State student studying in Japan, said she was in Australia when the quake hit. It was only shortly after the earthquake that many of the students living in her international dorm temporarily returned to their home countries, or traveled to the southern area of Japan.
With the devastation engulfing the country, Ilyas said she didn't want go back sooner than she needed to.
"I had planned to return to Japan March 16, however since the state of affairs in Japan was unstable I was allowed to postpone my return until this Friday," she said in an e-mail. "My area of Tokyo has mostly returned to normal and I really look forward to returning."
While both students live in Tokyo, they are far enough away from the wreckage and safe.
"It's relatively quiet where I am right now. The effort is now currently focused on search and rescue of the people from the destruction up north," Combs said. "The area around as well as the nuclear power plant issue is also what is being dealt with currently."
Saiful Islam, radiation safety officer and associate professor of physics and astronomy at Ball State, said Japan's main concern is making sure the nuclear power plant in Daiichi is stable.
"The main thing they are tying to do is cool down the plant and the main fuel rod, which is housed beneath the reactor," he said. "You need water flowing through that, which will replace the harmful gases."
Islam said he thinks Japan is doing all they can to suppress the reactor.
"They are doing everything right," he said. "However, in case it goes out of control, there are other options ... such as burring the entire place with cement and other material [similar to what's being done in Chernobyl, Ukraine], but it is not in that state yet."
Islam said the people who need to be concerned are people living within 10 to 20 miles around the nuclear reactor. He said people, food and soil around the area could be exposed to large amounts of radiation.
While Ball State students studying in Japan were safe after the earthquake, people in United States are worried about radiation contamination. However, some local experts said it is not a concern.
Stuart Walker, director of IU School of Medicine - Muncie and alternative radiation safety officer, said there would have to be a much larger amount of radiation for it to make it to the United States.
He described the travel of radiation like a volcano erupting. The plume coming from the volcano travels into the atmosphere, where the particles disperse and dissolve. He said when things travel into a large fluid such as the atmosphere, particles get farther and farther away from each other, essentially cutting the amount of radiation in half.
Walker said the radiation drops so dramatically that even the most sensitive devices cannot read the insufficient amount of radiation.
"As far as I know, at this point the amount getting to the West Coasts are not measurable with normal means," he said.
Walker highlighted how people have radiation around them every day.
"If you live in Indiana you are exposed to radiation because we have radioactivity in things such as radiation gas from people's cellars or carbon 14, radon, and other sorts of low levels of radioactive material," he said. "They even used to manufacture dishware in the 1950s that had a radioactive metal in it, which was even detectable with a Geiger counter."
But for people in Japan, the levels of radiation are dangerous. Walker said the country is taking specific and simple precautionary measures. The three most important are distance, barriers and time, he said.
"One thing people are doing is staying indoors because one thing that diminishes danger from radiation is a barrier. So people inside to some extent have some material between them and the radiation," he said. "People who are working [at the site] reduce the time of their exposure like being in at only 15 minutes at a time, because the longer the time the bigger opportunity of danger. And of course distance. People are making sure they are as far away from the radiation as possible."
David Call, assistant professor of geography, said he wasn't surprised by the amount of damage when he heard about the incident in Daiichi.
"[When I heard about it], I was sorry to hear about all the problems, but I guess I wasn't shocked. Nuclear power is usually safe, but it's hard to make an energy source without any problems," he said.
Call said it was the first nuclear reactor to fail in 25 years, which is good in comparison to other energies.
"For the nuclear plants ... the weakness was the backup generators were in an area that wasn't protected for tsunamis," he said. "Sometimes things come together the wrong way. It's like you're winning in blackjack, and then all of a sudden you're losing seven or eight hands in a row."
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