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If we have power back to that reactor we re not sure whether we have adequate cooling for that reactor. let s assume they get all of it under control and that s an assumption, it hasn t happened yet and the power is working again, how much damage would we have already suffered? first, obviously, we have the workers in the plant. how bad a situation are they in and then the people in the 12, 50 mile perimeter, et cetera? what kind of damage are we looking at is this. based on what we know and there s a lot of uncertainties here but still it looks like there s been at least partial core meltdown and two or three reactors. there is concern about reactor number four where the spent fuel so there s been some radiation releases. there have been exceedingly high radiation levels at times but i want to point out it to viewers this doesn t seem nearly as bad as chernobyl and chernobyl what we had was votal lock of a ....
The steam that would be released from a large break was supposed to be condensed and by the water in the suppression pool, in the large structure. and the concern was that if the structure failed as a result of these unconsidered loads, you would lose containment, which they may have continue at one of the fukushima plants now. and i would also lose the source of cooling water for the reactor core. so the the thing that was of potential trouble is you could have a core meltdown. an uncontrolled release of radioactive material. it sounds to me what you re describing is what s happening in terms of the loss of coolant and the overheating the result. am i being oversimplicity sonic is your fear what s been oversimplistic, or is your fear what s been happening? ....
Richter scale. john, what is your sense of both the government and industry s state of play when it comes to american nuclear facilities? well, my feeling is the same 30 years later. what we have are 104 nuclear power plants that all have the same generic risks. they re all built on water for cooling. many are built on or near earthquake faults. as we ve seen in japan, one of the greatest risks, in addition to a meltdown of the core when it can no longer get water, you also have the storage of spent fuel rods onรง site in non-contained pools, because there is no place to put after 60 years, there is still no long-term storage of nuclear waste. so you have the danger of a core meltdown from the operation of a plant. you also have the danger of a meltdown from the lack of water ....
yeah, very hard, bill. 20 miles around there, exclusion zone. people were told just stay inside. luckily for our sake, it dissipates mile by mile as you leave the reactor area. we re down here in tokyo now. it s huge city. and the levels here, even lower. but, again, changes from day to day, hour to hour. bill: absolutely. the big fear the core meltdown that could be serious. bill: if that happens, and new york city is the largest city in america, 18 million in the metro area, 36 million double in the tokyo area. you can just imagine. adam, you went out to a small town in the nuke zone. what did you find there? well, we saw people who were lining up just to fill their different jugs and buckets with water. i mean, it depends which town you are in. some towns have electricity. some towns have water. but in some places they have neither. ....
Scared a lot of people. they re first to admit there was no viable emergency plan, the evacuation plan was weak. they have changed a lot since then. they say they have learned the lessons over the past 32 years. but surprisingly things on the outside still very much the same. we didn t know. it was scary. we knew the sirens had gone off. somebody said something happened at the nuclear power plant. chaos. chaos. it was march 1979, a partial core meltdown at three mile island that shut the plant down and sent radioactive gas into the air, all of it just a stone s throw from joan and kenneth s house. we had a 5-year-old son we had to worry about. we had to worry about his safety and, our concern was to get him out of the area. good morning, everyone. some radioactive steam still leaking this morning from a damaged nuclear power plant in pennsylvania. it was a combination of mechanical failure and human error. to this day, the most serious nuclear power accident in american h ....