Page 24 - Treactor Core News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Ukraine. how does what's going on in japan compare? >> well, i mean, it's much more complex. chernobyl you had, essentially, just one plant. here you have three or four reactors, and they're in the middle of a natural disaster that we here in the u.s. can only imagine the devastation. a 9.0 magnitude earth weak, a 30-foot wall of water and trying to deal with the complexities of a nuclear plant and potentially a meltdown of a reactor core amidst that kind of devastation. i mean, it's just, it is truly a huge challenge, and people i talk to in the nuclear industry are saying, look, this is bad....

Reactor core and goes into pools that fuel also needs to be kept cool. it's not as volatile as the fuel. >> bill: it's possible that a terrorist attack or intrusion nature could have somewhat the effect. >> it's certainly not impossible. something we need to worry about. >> bill: doctor, have you been studying the chernobyl victims. we hear these 17 servicemen low level radiation is there any such thing as low level. >> ininvisible. you breathe it in with contaminated air and water. if we have learned one thing from chernobyl there is a lot more to learn. >> they are deemphasizing, authorities...

Your more expert eye, how worried should we be here? >> that's a good question. we're some place we've never been before. we have not had this kind of core damage. three mile island was core damage but it was in a different environment. this has gone on for days. it's been continuing struggle. nobody is quite certain about how a reactor core will behave as it gets to be more and more damaged. we're now seeing fission products and the radioactive materials that are created during operations. and that means that the fuel rods have cracked open or perhaps broken open. and the steam that they're r...

Reactor core and goes into pools that fuel also needs to be kept cool. it's not as volatile as the fuel. >> bill: it's possible that a terrorist attack or intrusion nature could have somewhat the effect. >> it's certainly not impossible. something we need to worry about. >> bill: doctor, have you been studying the chernobyl victims. we hear these 17 servicemen low level radiation is there any such thing as low level. >> ininvisible. you breathe it in with contaminated air and water. if we have learned one thing from chernobyl there is a lot more to learn. >> they are deemphasizing, authorities...

We have the chernobyl, of course, in our deep memory of the soviet union, where that occurred, and that was the worst. here's chernobyl. it has the highest rating, a seven. the levels below that are at five, three mile island, that got a five. the japanese officials are saying now that the situation at fukushima right now, the one we're looking at, that plant is still a four. give us a sense of what that means, seven being chernobyl, five being three mile island, and they be the difference not just in the meltdown degree, but the level of successful containment. put those two factors together,...