A  plume from Japan’s quake-crippled nuclear power plant would enter Vietnam Saturday night, but wouldn’t pose risks to human health, Vietnamese scientists said.

 

According to a group in charge of handling information related to the the Fukushima plant disaster, the plume, which would hang over the Southeast Asia for a couple of days, would quickly disperse over the weekend.

 

The radioactive levels would decrease gradually, said the group, which functions under the Ministry of Science and Technology.

 

In the worst case scenario, the radioactive level in Vietnam would increase 100 times from the latest readings, but even at such an increase, the level is thousands of times lower than the country’s regulated limits, according to Vuong Huu Tan, chief of Vietnam Atomic Energy Commission.

 

Also on Saturday, the Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology announced that it has found radioactive iodines in rainwater and pine leaf samples taken from Hanoi.

 

But the amounts were too small to do harm to human health, the institute said, denying recent rumors about high radiation found in Vietnam’s rainwater following the nuclear catastrophe in Japan.

 

Readings at observation stations of the institute have also showed no abnormal increases in radiation so far, it said.