I don't understand why all resources in Japan weren't there to pump seawater into the reactors. At one point they had a generator run out of gas which caused one of the explosions.

I understand that things are chaotic there, but a helicopter can bring in more gas at any point.

I' ve been hearing about fire in a fourth now too.

Ginger, what does it mean? I mean, I hear beyond 3 Mile Island, but I don't know what it means, in practical terms.

I know it's bad. God, those poor people in Japan.

Some perspective, Erin.

I'm glad Ginger's here.

Come the apocalypse, I'm going out in search of Buffistae.

As of about a half an hour ago, they were still managing to add water to units 1-3, but now there's a fire in unit 4. Of course, they can dump water into unit 2 now, because the pressure has been relieved, although not the way one would have chosen. As the article says, the exposure rates are getting too high for workers to stay there.

Even in the worst case, the exposure to any one individual downwind is going to be small. No one who's not near the plant is going to keel over and die. The biggest danger with these particles is increased long-term chance of cancer. The main cancers from Chernobyl were thyroid cancer in children, because one of the longer lived isotopes is radioactive iodine. They're already distributed potassium iodide, and if you give the thyroid enough good iodine, it doesn't try to take up more. It didn't help that the diet in the Chernobyl area was already low in iodine.

Thanks, guys. That's good info.

I used to go to CNN for news, but I don't really trust them anymore.

ITA, Cash.

I don't understand

There was a 9.0 quake, tsunamis and nearly 350 significant aftershocks. The death toll might climb over 10,000. All resources are desperately needed just about everywhere. Chaotic seems an understatement.

Cash...

"If you look at Chernobyl, they did not have a containment [system]. So once they had an accident, they had massive releases of radioactive materials," Klein says. "In the case of Japan, as long as the containment and reactor vessel remain intact, it's not likely they will have massive radiation releases."

The containment vessel is what is at issue now. It's not secure.

They just had a press conference that indicated that some of the high radiation levels at the plant may be due to the fire in Unit 4, which may have exposed the spent fuel pool. That would mean high levels near that building, but possibly less radiation off site.

You know what I don't get? Maybe this is stupid but what about an earthquake/tsunami makes a nuclear reactor fail? Is it as simple as broken pipes? I'm sorry if I missed something (I probably did) but the problem seems systemic which makes me think that simple quake-induced pipe breaking isn't enough to have done all this.