I know it's bad, Hec. I'm not saying there isn't increasing danger. But as Ginger said, it's not Chernobyl levels of disaster. Yet.

And again, as Ginger points out--it's the other shit they're dealing with right now that makes this one so hard to get under control.

Nonian, are you still around? Could I e-mail you a quick question about the DUI probation violation?

Sure; I'm here

Eta: this is the part of DST I hate. I need to get up in the morning but I can't fall asleep. But it does give my sympathy for those with insomnia.

I'm so glad we have us.

Oh my god, thank you. Insending to your profile addy.

Nonian, the cooling system that keeps circulating water to cool the reactor operates on electricity. the earthquake did not damage the plant, but it did disrupt the power supply so the plant switched to its backup power supply diesel generators. The tsunami swamped the generators. Without the power the cooling system failed.

From the Independent:

On a scale from zero to seven, the incident at Fukushima Daiichi has been rated as level four, meaning "accident with local consequences". The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale classified the Three Mile Island disaster in the US in 1979, which resulted from a partial meltdown of a reactor core, as level five, or "accident with wider consequences" – the same category as the Windscale fire of 1957. The Chernobyl crisis in 1986, when a reactor blew apart with a catastrophic release of radioactivity, was classed as seven, a "major accident".

But if they're saying it's beyond Three Mile Island that would be closer to level six.

The thing that's concerning me is that they don't seem to have the resources on site to deal with it. The loss of power and generators is crucial and I haven't gotten the sense that they have it under control.

HOOKERS AND BLOW

Interesting bit on Japan's economy:

One of the great curiosities in the global economy is Japan's public debt; while we regard a debt-to-national income ratio of 60 per cent as a crisis, and the Greeks and Irish are running into the risk of default with a ratio of around 100 per cent, Japan has merrily chugged along with a ratio of close to 200 per cent for some years, a product of her slow growth and those official attempts to stimulate the economy through public spending.

Japan's gigantic mortgage has, so far, been easy for her to fund because she has almost exclusively funded it internally; Japanese salarymen still earn good money and they choose to save rather than spend it.

That could collapse in a hurry. Particularly if this event curtails nuclear power in Japan (which has few natural resources) and stifles production.

Nonian, almost all day-to-day activity in a nuclear power plant is designed to support the plumbing.

The earthquake caused the reactors to shut down automatically. The control rods, which stop the reaction, dropped into the core. The fuel, however, is still very hot. The fuel is in the form of pellets about the size of a pencil eraser and covered with zirconium cladding. They're stacked in long thin fuel rods in a framework and the whole apparatus sits in a large pool of water.

Normally, the circulating water that cools the core after a shutdown is circulated with pumps run by offsite power, but the earthquake took out the transmission lines. When offsite power is cut of off, the emergency generators start automatically, and the six-unit plant had something like 13 generators. However, then the tsunami hit and took those out.

After that, there are two systems that circulate water using convection, and there are batteries. They ran out of battery power and it took a while to get new portable generators to the site. In the meantime, the fuel continued to heat up. If the water boils to the point that the core is uncovered, the cladding on the fuel pellets starts to melt, which releases radioactive particles. Essentially, they had about six backup systems for cooling fail one after the other. At that point, they went to the last ditch step, which is flood the whole containment vessel with seawater and boron.

These are water-moderated reactors, and the water slows down the fission products so that they have a chance to hit each other and cause more fission. Without water, the reaction can't become critical, so you're not talking about an atomic explosion here. However, hydrogen from the melting cladding can (and has) exploded and the steam pressure built up. One or the other has apparent made an opening in the containment vessel at one reactor.

Also, hookers and blow.