Page 17 - Treactor Core News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

You would have you had a ct scan and if you ate one portion of spinach every day for a year, 1/5 at much. tlap sh that shows why efforts to keep the reactors under control have to ge on. as part of the desperate struggle to cool down the dangerous nuclear fuel, firefighters from the tokyo fire department hosed down react number three. smoke rising from the plant sews the effort is at least partially successf successful. in the next major efforts, trying to get the pumps working. what if they are damped beyond repair. >> so many other factors i'm not going to start to guess how complicated that...

Reactor core, the rods that we're worried about overheating and melting. and the hope is that when you connect power to unit 2 the cooling systems are going to start up again and you'll be able to get the core under control. but the key point was what you said at the end of your intro, which is that we don't know whether the systems within the reactor are working. >> in terms of reactor 2, obviously when we look at the images of the entire daiichi plant unit 2 seems to be in the best physical shape in terms of what we can see of the external containment structure. is there reason to assume tha...

Yes, they are protected, they're protected by steel, there's an outer casing of concrete. but not nearly to the -- designed to the level to withstand the same challenge that a reactor core might be exposed to. >> all right. jim, hang on. we'll bring in tom foreman from our d.c. bureau. tom, what's the latest there and that you're hearing in terms of stabilizing reactors? >> to echo what some of what jim said a minute ago, the encouraging part here is what we're hearing is that there really is much more of a real battle plan at this point. look, we've watched this helicopter thing going here, a...

Have no long-term solution and no interim solution. those are the two issues i think people are most focused on the u.s. plants. >> let's come back to the design of the plants in the united states. again, we don't want anybody to get overly concerned although there are folks who are i suppose, this issue of having the spent fuel ponds outside the containment vessel, is that part of the design feesh feature here? i know we've got 23 mark 1s, so are you telling us in those pools, as well, the spent rods are not under some protective containment vessel that would contain any radiation if some -- ...

Us in order to help understand the course of events at fukushima. dr. acton, thanks very much for joining us. really appreciate your time. >> my pleasure, rachel. >> engineers were able to connect an external grid power line cable to unit 2 today. how important is that? how will connecting power to the unit 2 reactor help the overall safety situation at daiichi? >> well, rachel, you focused in your introduction on this issue of the spent fuel pools. and that's one thing we're worried about. but if you remember, this crisis started off and continued with the issue of these rods in the reactor c...