WASHINGTON - The White House on Sunday said the United States has sent experts in nuclear reactors to Japan, where two nuclear reactors damaged in a massive earthquake are facing meltdown.

In a statement, the White House said a Disaster Assistance Response Team has been sent to Tokyo. The team includes people with nuclear expertise from the Departments of Energy and Health and Human Services as well the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The NRC members are experts in boiling water nuclear reactors and are available to assist their Japanese counterparts.

Officials from the Department of Energy, NRC, and other agencies have maintained contact with Japanese officials and will provide whatever assistance the Japanese government requests as they work to stabilize their damaged nuclear reactors, the statement said.

The NRC has released information stating that the US is not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity. The United States and Japan both have highly advanced capabilities for monitoring and predicting the path of any radioactive release, according to US media reports.

In addition to nuclear experts, 144 members of two urban search and rescue teams from Los Angeles County, California, and Fairfax County, Virginia, are also on the ground in Misawa, Japan, and began searching at first light on Monday.

The US efforts are coordinated by the US Agency for International Development. The agency set up a Response Management Team in Washington, DC, according to the White House.

Also on Monday, a US aircraft carrier deployed off tsunami-hit Japan for relief efforts repositioned after detecting low-level radiation from a malfunctioning nuclear power plants.

"The US Seventh Fleet has temporarily repositioned its ships and aircraft away from the Fukushima DaiIchi nuclear power plant after detecting low level contamination in the air and on its aircraft operating in the area," the Seventh Fleet said in a statement.

"The source of this airborne radioactivity is a radioactive plume released from the Fukushima DaiIchi Nuclear Power Plant."

The statement said that the radiation level was so low that it presented no health risk - less than one month of exposure to natural background radiation from rocks, soil and the sun.

The ship was operating at sea about 160 km northeast of the power plant at the time.

"As a precautionary measure, USS Ronald Reagan and other US Seventh Fleet ships conducting disaster response operations in the area have moved out of the downwind direction from the site to assess the situation and determine what appropriate mitigating actions are necessary," the statement said.

AFP-Xinhua

(China Daily 03/15/2011 page10)