re: #622 Killgore Trout

It’s really hard to sort out the news. The MSM is doing a terrible job keeping up with events and sorting out the potential dangers. I kind of gave up and I’m just hoping for the best.

The MSM alternates between headlines claiming a meltdown in progress and reporting on the explosions as a sign that a meltdown is imminent.

I don’t have any special insight into what’s going on - but based on what I’ve read, the Japanese govt and TEPCO are claiming that containment is holding on the reactor cores - that’s the most important thing. If they can hold containment, then the crisis can be averted.

It is possible that the cores have partially or full melted within the containment vessels due to lack of coolant, but the reactor vessels may be able to contain that (and did when the TMI reactor suffered a partial meltdown) - Chernobyl lacked a containment vessel due to the design of the RBMK reactor - so that when the building exploded, the core components were flung in all directions and the explosion sent the radioisotopes in to the air downwind of the plant, eventually reaching the Scandinavian countries, which sounded the alarm of a major event in the Soviet Union.

The real issue is can they hold containment and if it fails, then those downwind could potentially be exposed to radioactive particles from the core, including cesium 137, iodine (which is why the Japanese are stockpiling iodine tablets to prevent iodine uptake in to the thyroid), and other radioisotopes created during a nuclear reaction. Exposure would then a function of the kinds of isotopes released, the half life of the particles, and the size.