Containment Walls News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

That's their urgent need. what they are hoping is that they can pump water for months into these reactors and eventually cool them to the point where they can start to take apart the reactors and then use these pumps to intomb them. >> so how worried, how dangerous is this to the people, not only to live in the vicinity of these reactor, or these reactors, and in all of japan right now? >> this is a japanese radiation disaster? >> for all of the country? >> psychologically for all of the country but the health risk, they just extended it to 20 miles out. they have doubled it in the last week. ...

And the real danger is what we've been seeing today, the possibility of high levels of radiation whether it's going to be ten million times or just 1,000 time which is what the reading from the other reactor was. that could force the evacuation of workers. if it gets to be a wide scale evacuation, that means nobody to man the pumps, nobody to run the control rooms. that means the water levels drop in the pools and reactor cores. and that can lead to full meltdowns and possible breech of containment walls. >> and full meltdowns and breech of the containment walls means what? >> the best case is...

And that can lead to full meltdowns and possible breech of containment walls. >> and full meltdowns and breech of the containment walls means what? >> the best case is that these cores sort of melt down or partially melt down much it's all contained in these concrete boxes, basically. and then over the period of years, you would -- you have a slow period of pooling this radioactive mess. the worst case is that as they completely melt down and they punch through, they breech through the concrete walls spilling radioactive lava on to the beech, on to the surrounding area, spreading radioactivity...

Worst case scenario, the containment walls hold that nuclear fuel and trap it in there sow it doesn't release into the air. some of it has released. but how deep and deadly it is frankly we do not know. neither do the folks in japan. alisyn: we now know 23 people who live near japan's fukushima plant are being treated for radiation. 150 people are being monitored. the u.s. military says it will move several naval ships closer to the japanese coast just one day after 17 navy personnel were treated for radiation poisoning. dr. chow is the radiation oncologist. >> i think that our hearts go to th...

In addition to the water being pumped in from the ocean, that's a backup plan, one set into the design of a reactor such as this. see these plates that hold the rods? those can be put in place to control the fuel rods and slow them down and trap that nuclear radiation to make sure it does not release into the air. control rods here are marked in yellow and they can slide down tbhb this case they divide the fuel rods in the four different areas. so again you get more containment on the inside of the fuel rods. one other thing to show you, we can show you the containment walls that are so critic...