* ASIA NEWS
* MAY 17, 2011, 1:10 P.M. ET

Documents Illustrate Desperate Hours at Plant
By CHESTER DAWSON

TOKYO—Thousands of pages of documents newly released by Tokyo Electric Power Co. paint a grim picture of the tension-filled atmosphere inside the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's control rooms during the minutes and hours following Japan's massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which set off a chain reaction leading to core meltdowns at three reactors.

The partially redacted data and photos—some of which depict frantically handwritten scribbles and schematics on a series of whiteboards inside the No. 1 and No. 2 reactor's control room—were retrieved April 30 from the plant but not released until late Monday. "It took us a while to prepare and piece together the materials due to the huge volume," company spokesman Hajime Motojuku said Tuesday.

The bulk of the materials, distributed on discs with digital files, show reams of raw numerical data. They include photos of broadsheet computer printouts and other formatted charts with thousands of data points for measurements of reactor heat, pressure, water levels, fuel rod positions and the status of cooling pumps, among other functions. Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, also released a smaller batch of more recent documents highlighting its various efforts to restore electric power to each of the reactors, a task that was achieved on April 26.

But a series of what Tepco terms reactor "diaries" from the first 48 hours after the quake include the most visually arresting materials. These feature snapshots of whiteboards on which plant employees—11 of whom remained in each of the plant's three control rooms—jotted down status updates on the progress of the reactor shutdowns and steadily increasing radiation levels around the facility.

Using red, black or blue ink markers, the plant operators appear to have scribbled down the notes quickly. Many are smudged or illegible. Others depict complex diagrams and are peppered with technical jargon or acronyms such as SBO for "station blackout."

Tepco said it strategically placed black dots to cover up "personal information" on the whiteboards such as the names and phone numbers of control room employees, none of whom are pictured. Yet their accounts provide a clear picture of events as they unfolded from bad to worse.

One such timeline from March 11 includes a series of increasingly dire entries on reactor No. 1 such as "3:50 pm—Measuring instrumentation power cut. Water levels unknown," "5:47: Reactors switching stations inoperable due to loss of breakers," and "9:51 pm—Entry to reactor building prohibited." Another log from March 12 notes cryptically "4:30 pm—Site entry prohibited. Tsunami. Department manager's orders."

The materials also show that in a four-minute span between 3:37 p.m. and 3:41 p.m. on March 11, electrical power to all three operational reactors at the Daiichi plant was completely severed. Tepco later determined that low-lying backup diesel generators had been swamped by tsunami waves, rendering equipment used to cool the reactors inoperable. But it isn't clear if the operators were aware of this initially. One set of whiteboard notations, some scratched out and then written over in haste, reflect mounting distress as attempts were made to restart emergency core-cooling systems. One such log reads: "5:16 pm—ECCS malfunction."

Tepco publicly confirmed for the first time Sunday that all three reactors suffered core meltdowns as a result of the loss of power—as soon as 16 hours after the quake struck in the case of reactor No. 1.

In contrast to the ad hoc nature of the publicly released documentation for reactor No. 1, one timeline for reactor No. 2 was partially transcribed in the form of a neatly typed memo on a single formatted page dated Friday, March 11. It highlights the 54 minutes between the "seismic monitor trip" at 2:47 p.m.—when the quake shook the plant at a local magnitude of 6.0—until 3:41 p.m., when a complete loss of electricity was confirmed minutes after the tsunami struck.

At the bottom of the formatted page is a notation from Tepco: "Intellectual property. Handle with care. Limited to internal distribution only for relevant employees."
http://online.wsj.com/artic...329011846064194.html

quote Originally posted by JazzMan: ...In a true worst-case scenario the molten fuel would melt its way down to the water table and produce an on-going geyser explosion of steam and isotopes....

Containment structures are designed to contain a meltdown that escapes the pressure vessel.

Even if the reactor hadn't been shut down by either control rods or boron injection, the melting of the fuel would shut down the reactor.

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: Containment structures are designed to contain a meltdown that escapes the pressure vessel. Even if the reactor hadn't been shut down by either control rods or boron injection, the melting of the fuel would shut down the reactor.

xc

Fission does occur outside of a reactor time to time, I am sure you are familiar with the term excursion.

quote Originally posted by JazzMan: Yeah, we should ban solar power, it's just too dangerous and expensive to deal with if something goes awry.

Don't start in on solar panels. The next thing you know somebody will want to set up an exclusion zone around my car due to auto accidents causing so many deaths.

quote Originally posted by carnut122: Don't start in on solar panels. The next thing you know somebody will want to set up an exclusion zone around my car due to auto accidents causing so many deaths.

By FAR driving is THE most dangerous thing we all take for granted.

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: By FAR driving is THE most dangerous thing we all take for granted.

Yep, sure is. Kills almost as many people as we lost in Vietnam. If we built a Vietnam Wall for killed drivers it'd take up square miles.

Luckily, no matter how bad an auto accident is the detrimental effects are pretty much limited to a few dozen square feet and hours of lost use of infrastructure. Auto accidents are a very personal and localized disaster.

New footage released, best yet.

http://www.theatlanticwire....-inside-plant/37863/

quote Originally posted by JazzMan: Yep, sure is. Kills almost as many people as we lost in Vietnam. If we built a Vietnam Wall for killed drivers it'd take up square miles. Luckily, no matter how bad an auto accident is the detrimental effects are pretty much limited to a few dozen square feet and hours of lost use of infrastructure. Auto accidents are a very personal and localized disaster.

Yeah. I do understand you are all about that all important infrastructure. I mean who really cares about the dead, right?

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: Yeah. I do understand you are all about that all important infrastructure. I mean who really cares about the dead, right?

Have no idea what point you're driving at, why don't you spell it out for slo' ol' me?

Found this report on nuclear and other subsidies, it's pretty dense and well-cited/annotated.

http://www.repp.org/repp_pubs/pdf/subsidies.pdf

quote Originally posted by JazzMan: Found this report on nuclear and other subsidies, it's pretty dense and well-cited/annotated. http://www.repp.org/repp_pubs/pdf/subsidies.pdf

So what does that report say to you?

Respectfully you do seem to have a lot of things well studied and thought out. I'm just not sure how you feel this report fits into the discussion.

[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 05-19-2011).]

I took a quick look at the report that JazzMan posted (just above).

I think that the relevance of that report to this discussion is that it was only by the force of government subsidies to the nascent nuclear power industry that nuclear power generation in the U.S. advanced beyond the R&D stage to become commercially viable as a significant fraction of the U.S. energy market.

The implication is that there is an argument to be made in favor of continuing government subsidies for renewable energy sources like wind, solar and biomass -- provided that the subsidies go towards R&D to promote technical innovations that would make the renewable energy sources more commercially viable.

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 05-19-2011).]

Japan’s Fukushima Reactor May Have Leaked Radiation Before Tsunami Struck
By Yuji Okada, Tsuyoshi Inajima and Shunichi Ozasa - May 19, 2011 5:21 AM CT

A radiation alarm went off at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima nuclear power plant before the tsunami hit on March 11, suggesting that contrary to earlier assumptions the reactors were damaged by the earthquake that spawned the wall of water.

A monitoring post on the perimeter of the plant about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) from the No. 1 reactor went off at 3:29 p.m., minutes before the station was overwhelmed by the tsunami that knocked out backup power that kept reactor cooling systems running, according to documents supplied by the company. The monitor was set to go off at high levels of radiation, an official said.

“We are still investigating whether the monitoring post was working properly,” said Teruaki Kobayashi, the company’s head of nuclear facility management. “There is a possibility that radiation leaked before the tsunami arrived.” Kobayashi said he didn’t have the exact radiation reading that would trigger the sensor.

Officials at the company, known as Tepco, had earlier said the plant stood up to the magnitude-9 quake and was crippled by the tsunami that followed, causing the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986. The early radiation alarm has implications for other reactors in Japan, one of the most earthquake prone countries in the world, because safety upgrades ordered by the government since March 11 have focused on the threat from tsunamis.

http://www.bloomberg.com/ne...on-before-quake.html

quote Originally posted by dennis_6: New footage released, best yet. http://www.theatlanticwire....-inside-plant/37863/

Except for the insurmountable issue of the nuclear material and future nuclear contamination, it looks like the entire facility needs to be bulldozed into the ocean.

Meltdowns also likely occurred at No. 2, No. 3 reactors of Fukushima plant

2011/05/18

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photoThe Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant seen from about 38 kilometers west of the facility and at an altitude of 7,300 meters (Eiji Hori)

Data shows meltdowns occurred at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, creating huge problems for the plant operator that had presented a more optimistic scenario.

And like the No. 1 reactor, the melted fuel appears to have created holes in the pressure vessel of the No. 3 reactor, according to the data of Tokyo Electric Power Co. released May 16.

Goshi Hosono, special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, acknowledged the likelihood of meltdowns at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.

"We have to assume that meltdowns have taken place," Hosono said at a news conference May 16.

Haruki Madarame, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission, said in a separate news conference the same day that the meltdowns should not come as a surprise.

"When highly contaminated water was found at the No. 2 reactor building in late March, we recognized that a meltdown had taken place. So I informed the government," he said. "As for No. 1 and No. 3 reactors, we recognized that, given the processes that led to the accidents there, the same thing had occurred."

Immediately after the crisis erupted at the nuclear power plant in March, experts pointed out that meltdowns likely occurred at all three reactors.

But TEPCO's measures to contain the crisis have been based on the assumption of lighter damage to the reactor cores.

TEPCO had said it believed that only a portion of the nuclear fuel rods had melted. Now, it appears that all parts of the fuel rods have melted.

TEPCO recently said a meltdown likely occurred at the No. 1 reactor. But a TEPCO official on May 16 declined to comment on the possibility of meltdowns at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.

"We have yet to be able to grasp the entire situation at the plant," the official said.

A meltdown is a situation in which nuclear fuel melts and accumulates at the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel, which is located inside a containment vessel.

At the No. 3 reactor, the melted fuel may have burned through the pressure vessel to the containment vessel, the data showed.

TEPCO on April 17 released a schedule to reach a cold shutdown at the Fukushima plant within six to nine months.

However, given the latest data, the embattled company will have to drastically modify its plans.

If meltdowns have indeed occurred, more time will be needed to construct a system that cools the reactors. In addition, the company will be tasked with the huge chore of disposing of massive amounts of highly contaminated water.

TEPCO's latest data describes the situation immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami devastated the coast of the Tohoku region on March 11.

Release of the data, which had been kept at the central control room at the nuclear power plant, was delayed because it took time to restore power and remove radioactive materials attached to the papers.

According to the data, the pressure in the pressure vessel of the No. 2 reactor dropped at 6:43 p.m. on March 15. A similar drop in pressure also took place at the No. 3 reactor at 11:50 p.m. on March 16.

Those declines were apparently the result of holes made in the pressure vessels.

Previously, it was believed that water was leaking through holes at the bottom of the pressure vessels where measuring instruments and part of the control rod mechanisms were located.

Now, it appears that melted nuclear fuel formed new holes in the pressure vessels.

Radioactive materials, such as technetium, produced when nuclear fuel rods are damaged, have been detected in water in the No. 3 reactor building. That discovery has raised speculation that the melted nuclear fuel has breached the pressure vessel and landed in the containment vessel.

During the meltdown at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979, the fuel remained in the pressure vessel. But work to remove the melted fuel from the pressure vessel, which started in 1985, took five years to complete. An additional three years were needed to confirm that radioactive contamination had been removed from the reactor.

Given the more serious situation at the Fukushima plant, some nuclear experts say more than 10 years will be needed to remove the melted fuel, eliminate the contamination and dismantle the reactors.

Fumiya Tanabe, a former senior researcher at what was then the government-affiliated Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, said black smoke from the No. 3 reactor building in the days after the earthquake and available data on pressure showed early on that a meltdown had taken place.

"Before we saw TEPCO's data (released on May 16), we had been already aware of the possibility (of a meltdown)," he said.

Tanabe criticized TEPCO's recovery efforts and measures that were taken based on a situation that was much less serious than reality.

He said TEPCO's optimistic scenario led three workers to be exposed to highly radioactive water on March 24 and prevented measures to keep contaminated water from leaking into the sea through a trench at the No. 2 reactor building.

"In resolving serious accidents like those (at the Fukushima plant), it is a cardinal rule to work out recovery measures based on the worst possible situation," he said.
http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201105170428.html

quote Originally posted by carnut122: Except for the insurmountable issue of the nuclear material and future nuclear contamination, it looks like the entire facility needs to be bulldozed into the ocean.

Once they started using seawater to cool the reactors there was no possibility of saving the plant.

Better than bulldozing it to the ocean would be to decontaminate it and recycle it.

Things that have been contaminated can be cleaned and will be non-radioactive.

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: Once they started using seawater to cool the reactors there was no possibility of saving the plant. Better than bulldozing it to the ocean would be to decontaminate it and recycle it. Things that have been contaminated can be cleaned and will be non-radioactive.

The vehicle graveyard in Chernobyl proves thats not always feasible.

quote Originally posted by dennis_6: The vehicle graveyard in Chernobyl proves thats not always feasible.

There is a difference between feasible and practical. It is feasible. It might not be practical.

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: Once they started using seawater to cool the reactors there was no possibility of saving the plant. Better than bulldozing it to the ocean would be to decontaminate it and recycle it. Things that have been contaminated can be cleaned and will be non-radioactive.

Not being facetious, but doesn't decontamination remove contamination from one point to a different point? For instance, we had a gas station that had leaking gas tanks. They came and dug out the tanks along with about 100 truckloads of soil. I assume that soil ended up in a landfill thus decontaminating the gas station site and contaminating the the site where they dumped the dirt.

Well typically with gasoline contaminated soil they can 'cook' the soil and burn off the hydrocarbons. If they aren't doing that they should be putting it somewhere that prevents the ground water from being contaminated. Basically that's what we do with garbage at a landfill

With nuclear waste yes we concentrate the low level waste and then basically 'hide' it somewhere. After time the radioactiveness of the waste is naturally reduced.

btw, ever wonder what we do with the slightly radioactive fly ash we get from coal fired power plant?

[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 05-21-2011).]

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: Well typically with gasoline contaminated soil they can 'cook' the soil and burn off the hydrocarbons. If they aren't doing that they should be putting it somewhere that prevents the ground water from being contaminated. Basically that's what we do with garbage at a landfill With nuclear waste yes we concentrate the low level waste and then basically 'hide' it somewhere. After time the radioactiveness of the waste is naturally reduced. btw, ever wonder what we do with the slightly radioactive fly ash we get from coal fired power plant?

So, how would you decontaminate the metal from the plant(besides exporting it as Hondas and Toyotas)? OK, I'll bite on the flyash. First, what would make it any more radio-active than other burned hydrocarbons, and what do they do with it besides spreading it on roads for during snow/ice storms?

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: There is a difference between feasible and practical. It is feasible. It might not be practical.

fea·si·ble/ˈfēzəbəl/Adjective
1. Possible to do easily or conveniently.
2. Likely; probable. More »
Dictionary.com

prac·ti·cal/ˈpraktikəl/Adjective
1. Of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something.
2. (of an idea, plan, or method) Likely to succeed or be effective in real circumstances; feasible.

Seems like my usage was just fine. Just another attempt by you to attack the person, not the argument.

[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 05-21-2011).]

quote Originally posted by carnut122: So, how would you decontaminate the metal from the plant(besides exporting it as Hondas and Toyotas)? OK, I'll bite on the flyash. First, what would make it any more radio-active than other burned hydrocarbons, and what do they do with it besides spreading it on roads for during snow/ice storms?

Wash it off.

Coal has trace radioactive elements embedded in it.

The majority of ash from coal fired plants ends up in landfills.

fails #3 of your definition.

[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 05-22-2011).]

Tanks for Radioactive Water Nearly Full at Fukushima Plant

VOA News May 23, 2011
A concrete pumping vehicle sprays water on the spent fuel pool of No. 4 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture, May 6, 2011 (file photo
Photo: REUTERS

A concrete pumping vehicle sprays water on the spent fuel pool of No. 4 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture, May 6, 2011 (file photo)
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* TEPCO Photos Show Tsunami Striking Fukushima Plant
* Japan, South Korea, China Leaders Visit Fukushima
* Tokyo Electric Reports Historic Loss

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant says temporary containers holding radioactive water will be full by the end of the week.

Tokyo Electric Power Company said Monday that it will take until mid-June to build a faciliy that can decontaminate the water and reuse it in the plant.

The water has been pumped out of reactors that were sprayed to cool them down in an attempt to contain the nuclear distaster triggered by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northwestern Japan.

Also Monday, international nuclear experts began arriving in Japan to probe the causes of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and make recommendations to prevent future accidents.

Six experts have arrived from the International Atomic Energy Agency's headquarters in Vienna. They will be joined by 14 experts from 12 countries for an investigation that will begin Tuesday and run through June 2.

The experts, led by British chief nuclear inspector Mike Weightman, will spend most of their time in Tokyo, but are expected to visit the Fukushima plant.

The team will present its findings at a special ministerial meeting of IAEA member states in Vienna in late June.

On Monday, TEPCO's share price fell nine percent, the first trading day after the company announced it had suffered a $15-billion loss in the year that ended in March, because of the huge costs of the nuclear disaster.

Japan's NHK national television reported Monday that it has obtained a copy of an operating manual for one of the crippled reactors at the Fukushima plant, which shows that technicians violated their own procedures in the crucial hours after the tsunami.

NHK said the technicians waited hours longer than they should have to begin venting steam as pressure built up in the containment vessel at the number one reactor. It said if the proper procedure had been followed, it might have been possible to avoid a hydrogen explosion, which is the suspected cause of radiation leakage from that reactor.

http://www.voanews.com/engl...ident-122433694.html

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: There is a difference between feasible and practical. It is feasible. It might not be practical.

Anything is practical if you can afford to throw a hundred billion dollars at it. Or a trillion.

quote It said if the proper procedure had been followed, it might have been possible to avoid a hydrogen explosion, which is the suspected cause of radiation leakage from that reactor.

It seems unlikely to me that the hydrogen explosion is the cause of the radiation leakage. Time will tell.

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: It seems unlikely to me that the hydrogen explosion is the cause of the radiation leakage. Time will tell.

I agree.

The explosions only seemed to damage the non-containment outer buildings.

quote Originally posted by dennis_6: Six experts have arrived from the International Atomic Energy Agency's headquarters in Vienna. They will be joined by 14 experts from 12 countries for an investigation that will begin Tuesday and run through June 2. The experts, led by British chief nuclear inspector Mike Weightman, will spend most of their time in Tokyo, but are expected to visit the Fukushima plant. http://www.voanews.com/engl...ident-122433694.html

So, the experts show up for a couple of weeks to investigate the cause of the accident from over 100 miles away. It's not even definite that they will go to the plant. That kind of says it all (about the safety of the plant) for me.

You would rather have these 20 people spend their time at the destroyed nuclear plant?

Maybe pitch a tent inside the exclusion zone?

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: You would rather have these 20 people spend their time at the destroyed nuclear plant? Maybe pitch a tent inside the exclusion zone?

From a certain point of view it would be nice if they "ate the fish", so to speak. Symmetry...

Speaking of exclusion zone, I wonder if the Fukushima 64,000 will be allowed back home by Christmas this year? Many homes and farms only suffered moderate damage from the quake and were not touched by the tsunami, yet the residents and farmers can't go home. Will it become as dead as Pripyat? Who's going to pay for killing a region? Hotel bills for 64,000 folks have got to be pretty steep, hopefully TEPCO has some money left after losing 15,000,000,000 bucks to pay for that.

Not sure how accurate this is, but they are saying 201 sv/h in the suppression chamber and 192 in the drywell. The source the articles are using is a Japanese site with the supposed measurements. Hopefully someone can validate or debunk the source.

http://enenews.com/radiatio...00-sieverts-per-hour

http://enenews.com/japan-sw...92-sieverts-per-hour

Source is http://atmc.jp/plant/rad/?n=1 Sometimes source goes down, and google cache must be used. Seen info on this yesterday, but waited a day to see if an explanation would come up. It is being reported by more than enenews.

If the numbers are valid, it seems to indicate fission , and the only thing keeping the melted rods contained is the concrete.

[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 05-24-2011).]

quote Originally posted by dennis_6: If the numbers are valid, it seems to indicate fission , and the only thing keeping the melted rods contained is the concrete.

So you are saying you think the 'melted blob' is fissioning at the bottom of the reactor vessel or you think it's fissioning outside of the reactor vessel?

Ok, so here we are almost 2.5 months later... And we still do not know for certain if the reactors are still cooking?

And I am supposed to trust Nuclear power? A coal fire would have been out by now, same with gas, natural gas... Hydro.. Well a damn can burst.. That will be a LOT of damage.. But the worst will be over in moments. Solar? I guess a solar array could fall over and kill someone.... Wind... Same thing, guess a turbine could fall over.. flatten a house or two..

but nukes... We COULD build safer models.. but we consistently chose not to. Sure they RARELY have problems.. 3 Major ones to date.. But they are MAJOR!!! Entire chunks of land completely unusable for decades. Heck we still don't know how bad Fukishima will get! And they are saying at least 10 years to clean it up... That is under the assumption that it is done with all the nastiness... Which it seems it may not be.

I have lived next to a few Nuke plants my whole life, I have watched my family DIE from Bone Cancer, Lung Cancer, Ovarian Cancer, Prostate Cancer..... I KNOW it is not safe. My grandfather right now is fighting Bone Cancer. He lost his wife to Bone Cancer a few years ago. Where did they get it? Same place everyone else around here did... X10. My grandparents worked at X10 in the beginning.

When they talk about how SAFE Nuclear power is, they completely disregard the entire first generation of Nuclear workers. Back then, safety was not such a concern. My grandparents were told, along with all the other workers, they did not need gloves.. The radiation would just wash off, so long as you scrubbed good at the end of your shift. At least they learned a lesson from all the workers who have died.. and are still dieing. Far more care is taken to protect the workers, but still these deaths are not counted in their safety figures.

What can I do about it? Nothing. But when I am asked if I want to build more Nukes... the answer will always be NO!

I thought it was impossible for a molten fuel mass to go critical? Can an uncooled molten mass melt or burn its way through concrete?

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1999/chunnel.html has some mention of 20" thick concrete damaged in tunnel fires.

Here's a site that seems to say concrete begins to lose its structural properties at 300C and rapidly loses it as temperatures rise to 500C, becoming structurally useless at 600C:

http://www.halcrow.com/Docu..._27_28_30_oct_07.pdf

It also says that steel, such as what's used as reinforcement in concrete, loses strength starting at 600C for hot roll, which is what rebar is normally IIRC.

Here's something that seems to say the melted cores have reached over 2,000C:

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/3927

Here's something that seems to say that melting fuel hits temperatures well over 2,000C:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/W...in_a_fission_reactor

From CNN today: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WOR...ear.plant/index.html

Tokyo Electric has already reported that damage to the No. 1 reactor was more extensive than previously believed. The company says the fuel rods at the heart of the reactor melted almost completely in the first 16 hours after the disaster struck, the remnants of that core are now sitting in the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel at the heart of the unit and that vessel is now believed to be leaking.

Tokyo Electric has avoided using the term "meltdown," and says it is keeping the remnants of the core cool. But U.S. experts interviewed by CNN say that while they may be containing the situation, the damage has already been done.

"On the basis of what they showed, if there's not fuel left in the core, I don't know what it is other than a complete meltdown," Gary Was, a University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor and CNN consultant, said this month. And given the damage reported at the other units, "It's hard to imagine the scenarios can differ that much for those reactors."

So far the trend has been TEPCO saying "It's not that bad", followed by "Oops, it's that bad", then "Wait, it's even worse than we said before", in what seems to be a never-ending cycle of worsening news. Hey, maybe today's new bad news will finally be the turning point? Hope, always hope. Here we are at 75 days since this nightmare started and we're still just hoping it won't get worse. Everywhere else in Japan it's been getting better as people months ago began rebuilding their lives. What hell it must be for those 64,000 victims trapped in a nuclear limbo with no clue when it might begin getting better.