And here's another question I have not heard addressed on the news yet, what are they going to do with all the seawater they are now pumping in to cool down the reactor? Won't all that water be contaminated?
So...where are they going to put it?
And one more thing I have not heard mentioned yet on the news: In the past year, we've had a volcano blow in Iceland, big earthquake hit Haiti, then one in New Zealand, now a big on in Japan...so where's the next one going to hit? Alaska? San Fran? LA?
I have not been glued to the TV but I have not heard anything from the USGS about what's coming next, anyone heard any predictions?
The cooling water, just like the steam they use to generate electricity, does not come in direct contact with the fission areas and it's quite safe to discharge the water. They got the rods back into the core and the fission stopped before they started having cooling problems. They only need to keep cooling the core to absorb the residual heat left over from reaction...though, if they can't cool it, it would possible melt through to the cooling channels...and then we have problems. Chernobyl never got close to getting the rods back in the core and they couldn't even stop the heat generating fission (added to which they were very slow to evacuate anyone).
According to a friend of mine who was involved with Nuclear submarine engineering in the navy and spent a considerable amount of time over there, Japan has extremely high standards when it comes to nuclear safety (considering their past)...in fact, their standards are quite higher than our own.
