Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant - another Chernobyl?

# Japan trade ministry says pressure inside Fukushima reactor may have risen to 2.1 time designed capacity Fri, 20:13 11-03-2011

Nuclear physicist Dr Walt Patterson tells the BBC it sounds like there is a “serious problem” at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant. “It’s the sort of thing that nuclear engineers have nightmares about,” he says. “If it is not resolved in the next few hours it will get serious. If the core is uncovered, then those rods at the top may get hot enough to melt themselves.”

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GJ8zXchM58
"The process of cooling the reactor is not going as planned"

James Acton, a physicist who examined Japan's Kashiwazaki nuclear plant after a 2007 earthquake, told CNN that Japanese authorities are in race to cool down the Fukushima reactor.If they can't restore power to the plant (and cool the reactor), then there's the possibility of some sort of core meltdown," he said.

:eek:

 

so being that japan is a relatively small island does a meltdown render the whole place hazardous?

 

How about a reference. I googled it and got you.

 

Japanese nuclear reactor in peril


Japanese authorities and the U.S. military on Saturday were racing to find ways to deliver new backup generators or batteries to a nuclear power reactor whose cooling facilities have been crippled by a loss of power as a result of the earthquake.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/11/AR2011031103673.html

 

Japan PM Kan increases evacuation area from nuclear plant to 10KM from 3Km prior - nuclear safety regulators say radiation level is increasing, now eight times normal levels

(got this from a news service I subscribe to)

 

The japanese are immune to radiation after world war II.

 

Follow Up 16:42ET: Radiation levels now nearly 1,000 times the normal levels at the plant - Japanese press citing safety regulators.

Holy shit.

 

wow!

 

this is growing faster than Ben Bernanke's printing press