Page 18 - Treactor Core News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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...

And particularly we saw that with these helicopters. i'm sure they fight forest fires there. why didn't we see these big planes that we see when you fight forest fires that can dump a lot more water than those helicopters. and so there are questions about the effectiveness of the japanese approaches to this and i think the united states is there to help. it's going to have people, resources. the united states is finally measuring the radiation levels in the japanese countryside and it's using excellent equipment. so i think the more needs to be done. the other problem there is, there have been...

With a statistic. in no way does this suggest there is going to be an earthquake or that what is happening tomorrow -- and in fact when you talk to the experts on all sides of this issue, all of them say that the u.s. nuclear power grid is far safer than any other nuclear system in the world. >> tom, when we talk about the union being concerned -- union of scientists being concerned, yesterday saying that earthquakes really aren't the only risk factor and that there have been a couple of close calls over the last several years. let's talk about what are some of these other close calls that nee...

Can you explain to us what has to happen? we've seen the pictures of the reactors. what's happened since you were here on monday? >> well, the situation continues to be very dynamic in japan. and as we looked at a lot of the available information, we saw greater challenges, i think, with providing cooling to some of the areas that had initially not been as much of an issue. so that was really one of the major changes that led us to re-evaluate some of our information and come up with a recommendation. >> in the situation as it stems right now, put water in there and -- >> well, i would say rig...

The tsunami. those backup pumps were knocked out by the tsunami. i want you to see what those sprayers and air drops are aiming at, not the reactor core itself which is in the center of this picture, but the pool that houses the rods. it's on the right. those rods don't generate power, but they are still radioactive. when the pool runs dry or merely low, those rods overheat. fires and explosions can happen after that. the worst case scenario is a meltdown, which let's be clear, has not happened yet at least not on a major scale as far as we know. we do know from the international atomic energy...