Japan Nuclear Fallout: How Bad Could It Get?

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Daily Beast:

Shortly after Japan was hit with the double disaster of a magnitude 8.9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, a possible third reared its head: nuclear meltdown. The quake caused 11 of Japan's nuclear reactors to shut down automatically, including three at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, 170 miles northeast of Tokyo. But the quake also cut Fukushima off from the power grid, forcing plant operators to switch to emergency diesel generators in order to continue cooling the reactor core, generators that then failed shortly after the tsunami hit. By the end of the day Friday, Prime Minister Naoto Kan had declared a “nuclear emergency,” and 200,000 people near the plant had been told to evacuate.

Then, Saturday afternoon, a building at the plant erupted in a massive explosion, apparently the result of hydrogen from the superheated fuel rods interacting with oxygen as plant operators tried to vent increasing pressure inside the reactor. Officials say the reactor wasn't damaged in the blast, and that radiation levels have actually been declining since. Nevertheless, they took the extreme step of flooding the reactor with seawater in an attempt to cool it down, and news that the cooling system for a second reactor at the same plant has begun to fail did little to calm worries of a meltdown. As Japan copes with its worst nuclear mishap at least since the leak at Tokaimura, The Daily Beast spoke with MIT Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering Ron Ballinger about worst-case scenarios, iodine tablets, and why he thinks everything is going to be fine. Plus, complete coverage of the quake.

What's the worst-case scenario?

Well, first off, we can't have a Chernobyl-like situation. The system is designed so that as long as we keep water in there to keep it cool, nothing will happen. There are three levels of protection here. One is the fuel cladding, and if that's damaged then it releases radioactive material into the pressure system, which is a steel container. Then there's a containment vessel around that. What likely happened is that you had fuel damage, damage to the first barrier, which produced hydrogen in the primary system, and then to keep the pressure down they vented the hydrogen into the building that was destroyed.
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As bad as things are, some reasons not to fear another Chernobyl.