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On reporting this the past few days, is the internal containment vessel around the reactor, there is also a secondary containment vessel which is in effect the building that surrounds the entire reactor complex. for us to have had a significant radiation leak into the environment, does that mean officials are saying both of the containment units have been breached, both the outer building and smaller containment vessel around the dome? >> that's a good question, not clear at all, and not clear the smallest has been breached yet. because the core nuclear material in there which had been an on-g...

Facilities and that was reflecting damage to the fuel rods, there had not been any full meltdown of those facilities, so even after the blasts they kept up the effort to cool those facilities down to prevent further damage to the fuel rods, any further meltdown. with the type of damage that you are worried about that you're saying this lack of pressure might indicate, does that mean they will not be able to continue to cool this down? that they will not be able to essentially keep working on it to make it more safe? >> that's a good point, because if the containment is breached the way it has ...

Open, but if the containment were intact, the pressure inside would be maintaining constant and not decaying as it is or reports show that pressure is dropping. >> in terms of that word containment, it is a word we use commonly not as jargon, it is meant to be several types of structure. containment could be the outside building that surrounds the reactor as a whole. that was what we saw the explosion do so much damage to in the first two explosions, but containment also refers to the smaller containment around the core itself, around the reactor itself? >> that's correct. these type of plants...

Structure, like containment within containment. the inner is primary containment, four to five feet thick concrete with inner steel liner two inches thick of steel to ride integrity against release of radioactivity. >> it is that primary containment vessel you are worried may have been compromised by the recent blast? >> initial reports hopefully turn out not to be true. initial reports are part of the containment called the pressure suppression pool or the toris, the round metal donut looking thing has been compromised. we don't know whether it was by the third blast the facility experienced ...

I am obviously a layman, trying to understand this for myself as well as make it understandable for viewers. >> it was a solid and accurate description of where we are today. >> okay. within the last couple hours, as i mentioned, a third explosion was reported at fukushima number 2 reactor. number 1 had explosion this weekend, number 3 did 24 hours ago. and now number 2 has happened as well. can we tell yet if this is a more consequential blast than the others or is this likely to be of the same consequence? >> the initial reports coming out of the facility are that this is the most severe exp...