I've been in more than a few power plants over the years, both nuclear and coal fired, mostly engaged in the installation, repair and rebuilding of pumps, valves and process piping. Their initial problem of pumps failing isn't the issue anymore. When the explosions occurred, I would guess they suffered extensive damage to the process piping, which means even with operational pumps they have no way to deliver the water internally. They have to spray it on, or drop it. While that helps a little, it simply can't provide enough cooling to work long term, which is why you see the situation continuing to worsen. Think of it this way. You have a really hot f'n pipe and you're trying to keep the temperature steady. You can run water through the pipe in enough volume to accomplish that. Try spraying it with a hose and you need a hell of a lot more water as the water will flash off quickly when it hits the hot pipe. My opinion, they cannot repair the piping system quickly enough while spraying water to control this meltdown. They're simply trying to let it bleed out slowly in an attempt to avoid a catastrophic explosion. One more thing. Those 50 or so brave souls in the plant are dead men walking. They've already received too much radiation to be saved.
I have been to Chernobyl. I know how bad it is right now in Japan. I am praying for those lost souls who probably were not even informed what they should expect. I have seen hundreds of Russian soldiers died horrible death a few weeks after they were doing the same thing - trying to dump water and sand on to pipes. This is way more serious than Chernobyl. Only a miracle could save them.
Yes it was immediately apparent to my father that breach of containment has occurred. All the propaganda from government and media use the words like "may" "could". That is all BS. And we Russians know a thing or two about propaganda. Even now reactor is spewing like in Chernobyl LATEST VIDEO http://rt.com/news/japan-nuclear-standby/
Yes, I agree. The 50 working are probably on a suicide mission. I don't know how they're even able to hold down food at this point of high/prolonged radiation exposure. They are heros to me for this though. They're basically trying to save MANY lives while knowing their lives are probably going to be cut very short.
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