Kinda makes you feel very, very, very, small, and helpless doesn't it?

Look at it this way: How much respect do you have for Japanese scientists? A lot, right? And we're over a year out and they seem overwhelmed by this thing. It's scary.

My understanding is that it's not the #4 reactor but the containment pool above it that is the major worry. #4 was shut down at the time of the quake but the pool was damaged when the roofs blew off other reactor buildings. If I'm following this correctly, having the reactor shut down actually meant the amount of fuel rods in the pool was greater than normal.

Of course, putting the pools with spent fuel rods as well as new ones, up above the reactors, could go down as one of the worst engineering decisions ever made on planet earth. If, the water goes out, you could have nuclear reactions occurring there without any containment.

I wrote "containment pool" when I meant "spent fuel rod pool."

It's not clear whether anything happened in the spent fuel pool in 4, or whether it was damaged only by the explosions in the other plants. But the building itself is in danger of collapse, especially given the many earthquakes that continue to plague the area.

As I noted previously, they're getting set to fire up more nukes. This party ain't over.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/world/asia/japan-seeks-to-restart-some-nuclear-reactors.html?_r=1

I wanted to write something clever about my non-obsession with nukes . . . but I realized that it was the influence of Happy-Hour Beefeater!

The world community should demand accountability for the radioactive impact of any reactor causing damage, including cleanup costs for all the flotsam about to land on the pristine pacific shores of the US west coast. Strict liability should be the standard imposed for nuclear incidents/accidents in the future. Without accountability I fear we are all Fukushimad.

Good luck getting General Electric to pay.

Heh! Good catch, Bill!

Here’s a link to an April 15 article in the online European Union Times. It says that Russia was stunned when Japan told them that up to 40 million Japanese, including the entire population of Tokyo, were in “extreme danger” of radiation poisoning and may need to be evacuated, and requesting that talks be resumed on returning the Kuril Islands to Japan as an evacuation site:


http://www.eutimes.net/2012/04/russia-stunned-after-japanese-plan-to-evacuate-40-million-revealed/

Oops... I should have studied the EU Website before passing this address along! This came today on the same forward-forward chain that it arrived on:

To___ From D--

Take a look at this news organization's website. It seems to have no reporters and no one takes credit for writing the articles. The sources for stories are stories written in other news organizations both conventional and non-conventional. They seem to rewrite the story in more alarmist language, which is not to say there aren't some elements of truth behind it, but personally I wouldn't believe a word from them without verifying it first with original sources and understanding those sources' biases.
 The Kuril islands are an ongoing dispute between Russia and Japan so how do we know the radiation issue is not being used (whether exagerated or not, i do not know) to make another case for the Japanese stance to take them back? And yes, there is radioactivity in kelp found off California according to a credible study. I would click through on the source links in this article and decide for yourself, but I found the article exagerating and overly alarmist. On the other hand, I am not alarmed if I find out Japanese officials understate a situation as they have a history of doing that .

D---

To __ from ___
 Yes, I would totally agree with D--- on all her points and add a couple of others.
(1)  Just by reading the article you sent, it is pretty clear to me that this is rag-tag journalism...at best.  The writing was pretty horrible.
(2)  Then, I also went to the website and the first article that caught my eye was about the US preparing for Alien invasion!  I immediately thought this must be a spoof journal (á la Onion, for example)
(3)  If you read the Careers section of the website, you will see why the 2 points above make perfect sense:  they SAY they don't require any experience from their journalists, but then a bit lower down say they DO;  to get published (and paid a pittance), you have to send them 200 articles a month;  you must swear never to be left-leaning in politics!  "Your political affiliation must NOT be leftist in any way. We are strongly against communism, neo-communism and other leftist dictatorial political ideologies that destroyed Europe. We are the one and only TRUE European conservative newspaper. We intend to preserve our rich European culture, religion, history and ethnic makeup."
So, IMHO, it's not a source to be believed.

(end)

Oops... a European-- or Asian-- Snopes would have been good on this one!-- Bee