From ABC News:
The Japanese have evacuated most of the reactor personnel from the Fukushima nuclear complex and are rotating teams of 50 workers through the facility in an attempt to cool it down.
"We are all-out urging the Japanese to get more people back in there to do emergency operation there, that the next 24 to 48 hours are critical," the official said. "Urgent efforts are needed on the part of the Japanese to restore emergency operations to cool" down the reactors' rods before they trigger a meltdown.
"They need to stop pulling out people—and step up with getting them back in the reactor to cool it. There is a recognition this is a suicide mission," the anonymous U.S. official said.
It is hard for me to fathom the totality of the events in Japan. The devastation of earthquake and tsunami was on a scale seldom seen in history. If the fuel rods are exposed to the air, some very nasty things like cesium are going to be put in our biosphere. Particles that don't break down for a long, long time. And now the remediation is being called a suicide effort. Seppuku.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's chief claimed there is no water in one of the spent fuel pools at the Fukushima nuclear plant, which Japanese officials have denied. According to the AP, "If NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko is correct, this would mean there's nothing to stop the fuel rods from getting hotter and ultimately melting down." White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Wednesday that the situation in Japan is "deteriorating and fast-moving."
It is a terrible and ironic coincidence that the japanese people have been the recipients of the most devastating consequences of atomic energy. I hope that things quickly find stasis. And I have no doubt that there are many heroic acts being performed today in Japan. May the japanese people receive our wishes, blessings and prayers.
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Ann Coulter thinks a little nuclear radiation is good for you.
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And why nuclear plants in California don't have emergency response plans for earthquakes. (Thank you Antonin Scalia and Kenneth Starr.)
