>>>>We really don't know yet what the eventual radiation damage will be. I don't think anyone is going to be able to draw any reliable conclusions until all those reactors are completely under control (or experience a catastrophic meltdown). Here are two articles from today's paper. The assessment yesterday of the American nuclear official, Gregory Jaczko, was much more concerned than anything the Japanese government or the plant operator has been willing to say. There seems to be a growing sense that they have both been stonewalling.
>>>>
>>>>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18nuclear.html?_r=1&hp
>>>>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17tokyo.html?ref=asia
>>>
>>>keep it in perpective. At Chernobyl the actual reactor was running at full power during a poorly planned test and exploded. The graphite in the reactor then caught fire . Nothing approaching that is happening in Japan.
>>
>>My point is that nothing approaching that has happened YET. Let's hope it doesn't.
>
>Mike,
>
>I am pretty sure anything closely resembling china syndrome ( core meltdown while chain reaction is running is not in the cards - the dampening rods must have cut that off, or the reactors woulod have blown due to insufficient cooling days ago. Perhaps the dampening rods are not fully in place and cooling is slower than hoped for due to more particles not caught (boron "poisoning" of cooling water makes me suspect that), but no runaway nuclear reaction is possible IMHO.
>
>That is not to say that melting cores from residual heat are harmless -
>what is melting is mostly the parts keeping radiation in.
>But Godzilla will neither be created nor awakened from Fukushima.
>
>my 0.003
>

Hmmm, I hadn't even thought of Godzilla. This is worse than I thought ;-)

My understanding from what I have read is that if they can't keep those rods covered, Very Bad Things could happen. They have apparently not been able to do so. The latest attempt, dropping water from helicopters, was called off because of the radiation danger to helicopter crews flying right over the source of the radiation. I'm not sure what their next move is.