it's been good at times, at other times they've had the water level drop and had them exposed and the heat has been building up. the whole issue here is you have a bidup of steam which you have to release in some fashion. that will automatically release some sort of radioactivity into the environment. is the question is how much, does it pose a real threat. right now they're saying pretty much not. but if they can't get this heating under control, if this goes further, then you start looking at a meltdown. there's talk already there's some degree of a meltdown happening inside. it doesn't seem like anyone really knows what's happening inside this unit. but if these rods start melting, they move up to around 2200 degrees with the heat they produce. uranium rods melt at about 2100. the concern is that eventually they could collapse entirely and if the containment building fails as the backup systems have faced, then you could have a