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Certainly a challenge, we are going to try tho do our best for you. jack spencer is a nuclear energy specialist at the heritage foundation. when you hear the headlines what does that mean to you? >> well it's not a good situation, that is for sure. but it isn't necessarily the catastrophe that i think many fear. look, what we need tho bear in n mind is that that containment facility is still intact, it hasn't been beached and that's what that is there for. all of the systems are in place to keep the nuclear power plant operating smoothly. there are layers are defense should that operation stop...

Would become -- super, super, hot and somehow get out through the bottom of the containment structure and then into the atmosphere. that would be really, really bad. >> martha: affect ground water and the earth below that where it could cook basically for earth. >> brian: that's why people said it was a hail mary pass on saturday. some experts said, i never heard of this because of the explosion, they put in a -- they flooded in sea water into the area. that destroys the reactors, they did it to two of them forever, so that's a big decision. and then they wonder is it going to work? with the s...

Reactors one and three extended blow holes through the secondary containment structure. that's the concern, because spent fuel pools are inside that containment building and if those lose water, those heat up, then we could potentially have radioactive material going into the environment. so if i had to rate this on a scale of three-mile island or chernobyl, i would say this is probably going to be worse than three-mile island, but not nearly as bad as chernobyl. >> i never trusted the old communist soviet union, they never told us the truth. i never felt they give us the truth about chernobyl...

Quickly as possible to minimize the exposure. >> let's take a look at this grid we have seen, it's a horrific grid, but it compares the various nuclear meltdown scenarios. we have the chernobyl, of course, in our deep memory of the soviet union, where that occurred, and that was the worst. here's chernobyl. it has the highest rating, a seven. the levels below that are at five, three mile island, that got a five. the japanese officials are saying now that the situation at fukushima right now, the one we're looking at, that plant is still a four. give us a sense of what that means, seven being c...

And three blew holes in the secondary containment structure. that's a concern because there's pools inside that containment building and if those lose water and heat up we could potentially have radioactive material going into the environment. if i had to rate this on a scale between three mile island or chernobyl this will be worst than three mile island but not as worse as chernobyl. >> i never trusted the old communist soviet union. they never told us the truth. i don't think they gave us the truth about chernobyl. the united states does value the individual citizens. our government does lo...