Page 4 - Storage Pool News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> president obama will head to chile late they are morning to lay out his vision for deeper ties within latin america. in japan, new problems at the country's crippled nuclear complex are overshadowing some success at cooling the plant's overheated reactors over the weekend. there had been some optimism. this morning, workers at the facility were evacuated after gray smoke rose from the spent storage pool at the plant's number three reactor. it development comes after officials said they had successfully restored water pumps to two other reactors, putting them under control in a state known...

Damaged reactors two and three. that means a likelihood of a limited release of radioactive material, possible deaths from radiation and severe damage to the reactor core. despite the reassessment, though an assessment that is now more in line with what the united states had two days ago, they decided not to expand the 12-mile evacuation zone. u.s. officials advised americans to evacuate 50 miles. tons of water was sprayed on reactor three on friday in an attempt to refill the storage pool. inside the damaged reactor building, workers spent the day trying to restore electricity. now at reactor...

What we're going to find out. whether the water wins or whether the radiation wins is the big question. >> bob, there's still this agreement even among japanese officials about whether or not in reactor four, in that storage pool that holds all that nuclear waste, those spent nuclear fuel rods, whether that pool is empty. >> reporter: well, it was very interesting today at a press conference a few hours ago, japanese deputy minister said, some people in the japanese government believe that it was empty and other people believe that there was some water in there. so you can see this information...

Place with respect to the reactor. it's up on the reactor refueling floor. it's there because it make it very handy when they go into refueling. they don't have to move the fuel very far to get it out of the reactor, get it into the reactor. and of course ultimately it is -- after it cools off in that pool for a while, it is moved out of the reactor building, and into a -- another storage pool which is common to the five or six units at the plant. it -- the spent fuel pool itself is actually in the reactor building, and under normal circumstances it has cooling, and there should not be any pro...

Heating up in this storage pool within one of the rooms of these reactor facilities. when you hear that, how loudly do alarm bells go off and how much does it worsen the situation? >> well, it's something that we have to be very concerned about because the spent fuel has to also be cooled. it's the cooling of the spent fuel is nowhere near as urgent as the reactor, but if something were to happen to cause the spent fuel pool to lose its water, these are pools that are several stories above ground and are not under the containment -- the big, thick, heavy reactor containment that you have with ...