Reply #9: Some corrections

[FBaggins]

Assuming you're going to build a reactor at all... the spent fuel pools pretty much have to be right there. In the newer designs, the pool may actually surround the core vesser itself.

Putting it somewhere else requires coming up with a way to move highly readioactive fuel somewhere else. It HAS to sit under water for a few years and the safest way to get it there is to create a path from the core to the pool that it entirely under water.

IOW... it most certainly wasn't placed there "because of cost"... it was because it had to be there.

One reason that the "spent fuel rods" were present in the reactor buildings--greatly complicating the situation and greatly escalating the danger--is that THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THESE HIGHLY TOXIC, HIGHLY FLAMMABLE RODS.

Also untrue. As I pointed out above, moving the fuel somewhere else in the first few years simply isn't an option. It isn't "convenience" or "cost savings" that puts them right next to the core. It's safety. Hard to believe in this situation... but it's true.

Several experts have said that the "spent fuel rods" should NEVER have been so positioned--and should have been sealed in cement/steel containers far away from the reactor cores

I have seen no such "experts".

This disaster has the potential of causing mass starvation in the human population of the Pacific Rim, in addition to a great escalation in cancer rates, cancer deaths and other medical impacts from ingesting radioactive sea food.

Not even close. It's a real problem for the sea area immediately around the plant, but it isn't a significant danger much farther than that. Every ounce of radioactive material in all six reactors only adds up to a tiny drop in the bucket when you're talking about the "pacific rim". Even the MANY nuclear explosions that occured IN the Pacific only sligtly increases the radioactivity.