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23 foot tsunami that wiped out anything in its path. homes, cars, boats, and people. and now, a new nightmare is developing at a nuclear power plant in northeastern japan. the amount of radiation at the plant has reached 1,000 times the normal level after the cooling system failed. 3,000 people living near the plant have been told to leave immediately. the kyodo news agency is now reporting that the government is ordering the plant to release pressure. in other words, radioactive vapor is going to be heading into the atmosphere to help to try and stop a melt down of the plant. and in this coun...

Northeastern japan, dr. he did win lymon, senior staff scientist at the union of concerned scientists. dr. lymon, what do you make of the situation at the nuclear power plant at this point, and is a plant like this built to withstand these shocks? >> well, i don't think this plant was built to withstand this kind of a shock. the problem is that no nuclear regulator requires a nuclear plant to be resistant to the worst case earthquake and looks like what we have here is a pretty close to the worst case. so it's not a surprise that the plants are not doing as well as one would hope. as a matter ...

Minutes. the airport at sendai was completely destroyed. workers and others scrambled to rooftops trying to stay above the move. a huge fire near an oil refinery near tokyo continues to burn. 80 other massive fires are burning on the coastline after the quake cut off gas lines, causing a series of explosions, leaving homes and businesses ablaze. power is out throughout ports of the country, and mass transit is down. in some places, trains derailed. tonight, evacuations are under way for miles around this nuclear point plant in fukushima. officials say the cooling system failed in the jolt. the...

>> and the containment if the worst case scenario occurred in the plant and there was what we called a melt down, what is the effect? is the effect like an explosion? like a nuclear bomb going off or simply what gets released into the air around that area? >> no, it wouldn't be as dramatic. the scenario is this. the fuel in a normal nuclear reactor is in solid form in the form of rods. if that fuel overheats and melts, it essentially becomes like a lava, which would then flow down into the floor of the vessel that contains it, and it is hot enough at that point that it could eat a hole in the ...