Page 9 - Michael Friedlander News Today

Jigsaw puzzle where the piece is missing, ive been as frustrated as you are. so i understand it. >> michael, when we think about chernobyl, we think about miles and miles, tens of thousands of miles, uninhabitable for a long time. what is happening to this? as we go to a 7, weve concurrently increased the amount of space around nuclear plant where they dont want people to live or evacuating. is this going to be habitable again? >> yeah. we should separate the two c topics. the issue in terms of ...

>> jim walsh, michael friedlander, kyung lah, thank you very much for the reporting. we appreciate it. were going to continue monitoring this for any late developments tonight. let us know what you think. were on facebook or follow me on twitter @anderson cooper. ill try to be tweeting tonight during commercial breaks. whos playing politics over the showdown to extend americas credit limit? is it president obama? the white house did some major explaining today. or is it republican lawmakers? n...

History. by comparison the three mile island accident was classified as a category five. earl yes on "american morning," former plant operator michael friedlander says while fukushima isnt exactly chernobyl, the signs arent good. >> the power plant was severely damaged. we dont exactly know what the condition its been in, but just one data point, the fact that were sitting here a month after the event, still not on a long-term situation of core cooling, we still dont have a backup emergency powe...

Readings. and now -- and i think the extension of the evacuation zone and this finding looking back saying there was more radiation released than maybe we had anticipated, my guess is those two things are linked. going forward, anderson, you know, i think of that nrc, the nuclear regulatory commission memo that was leaked. it was a memo from late march that expressed concern about aftershocks because these plants have already been stressed. theyve gone through the earthquakes. theyre filled with...

Tepco, the plants owner, now says it has no idea when it will be able to restore normal cooling for the reactors and spent fuel pools. in the last 24 hours two more powerful aftershocks have shaken japan. a 6.6 tremor knocked out power across tokyo, forced workers at the damaged plant to evacuate. at least one person was killed in a landslide. hours later a 6.4 quake struck, killing at least six people. around the same time came word that a fire had broken out at the plants number 4 reactor. tep...

Evacuations, that its sort of odd? >> well, i think in retrospect, obviously you have to say that u.s. officials got it right. and michael addressed this earlier. i think its better to evacuate people out to a zone rather than doing it a little bit at a time in phases. now, at the end of the day, as long as they do leave i think their radiation exposure will be moderate. but the psychological toll, the uncertainty that that creates, theyre wondering -- these people are going to wonder why they w...

Agency, to get into the field and to supplement those readings. and now -- and i think the extension of the evacuation zone and this finding looking back saying there was more radiation released than maybe we had anticipated, my guess is those two things are linked. going forward, anderson, you know, i think of that nrc, the nuclear regulatory commission memo that was leaked. it was a memo from late march that expressed concern about aftershocks because these plants have already been stressed. t...

>> what does it tell us? >> there are almost 500 different plants. there was an attempt to put everybody on equal footing. the categorization of a seven basically means that it was a really bad accident. that ee about the only characterization you could make. so if youre looking at this accident compared to other ones in other countries, everyone is reporting on a common basis. it really doesnt give you any notion of exactly how bad it is or what the level of effort is going to be. >> okay. mich...

You know, again, at the time we have to look back and see what were the capabilities, what did they know, what kind of instrumentation did they have and things like that? and so its easy in hindsight to go back and be critical. but i do think that it underscores one of the elements that we have been talking about on this show for almost three weeks now, and that is given the level of radiation that we found around the countryside its absolutely essential that it be monitored much more closely th...

Going to continue to be a concern. >> and michael, now theyre expanding the evacuation zone, but theyre not doing it based on sort of radius, which is the way we would think. theyre doing it based on where theyve gotten higher radiation readings in different towns and areas told to evacuate because of those radiation readings. that seems like an odd way to do it, isnt it? >> yeah, you know what, anderson? and again, its uncomfortable for me to be put in the position of defending people that ive ...