Page 18 - Radio Activity News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Operation is being seen as the closest cooperation with japan since the end of the war. ian williams, nbc news. >> officials called out plans to re vent radioactive gas from number three. let's bring in president for energy and research. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for asking me. >> we have five and six stabilized. what does this mean to the overall picture? >> i think the overall picture is much improved for now and so there's a fair amount of good news. they are not venting radio activity now from any of the reactors. in the spent fuel pools where there's a lot of auto activity wh...

The container tosspot. >> this is thursday. we are told on tuesday there was a fire at number four. wednesday a fire at number four and now on thursday there is no more water at number four but a huge problem at number three. and number three if the pressure builds up could explode and cause all kinds of problems. >> it is also causing the people of tokyo 140 miles away to get nervous. >> this is the avenue of tokyo. normally the sidewalk would be packed with people but fears of a possible nuclear catastrophe are keeping a lot of people off the streets. rush hour tokyo usually snarled with tra...

They tell us japan is very different. unlike chernoble fukushima did not erupt in a large plume into the upper atmosphere that would travel very quickly. and secondly the amount of radioactive material is much less. >> by the time it gets here whatever radio activity was let loose in japan it's going to disperse over the six days and 5,000 miles it took to be here. >> reporter: risk is proportional to dose. experts tell us the amount of cumulative radiation that we are likely to see here in california, hawaii, alaska is probably no more than a chest x-ray or maybe a flight from l.a. to chicago...

Weekend. let's go to anne thompson. >> good afternoon. restoring that power cable may be the best hope, because the goal is to get those pumps working again so they can circulate water in the reactor core and in the spent fuel pools. the big question is, do these pumps still work? they would have had to survived an earthquake, a tsunami and then these explosions that have happened at the plan the in the week since the earthquake and tsunami. no one is quite sure if it will work. it would be the fastest way to get water circulating. that water is absolutely crucial. the water is what shields th...

Chernobyl was a very different kind of reactor. it had a big graphite carbon block that was on fire and the sand was put in really to quench the fire. in this case, you have a meltdown where the melted fuel will be very, very hot and you're releasing radioactive materials already and your main job is really to contain the heat. and i'm not clear, i mean, presumably they've done the calculations and they're considering it. i think there can be negative consequences like melting from the floor if you pour sand on top. presumably they'd look at these questions before they actually did that. the c...