Q&A: What's happening at Japanese nuclear plants?

[jpak]

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-japan-quake-nuclear-qa-20110311,0,3242351.story\

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What happened?

Shaking from the magnitude 8.9 quake caused the reactors' control rods to be inserted into the core, a safety precaution that shut down the reactors' ability to generate electricity. The cores remained very hot, however, and would boil away all the cooling water within an hour unless the water were continuously circulating through the reactors' cooling towers. But the tsunami also destroyed the electrical grid that would provide power to the cooling pumps and disabled the backup diesel generators that were supposed to kick in if that happened. That left only batteries to run the pumps.

How long will the batteries last?

The batteries have a life of about eight hours. Japan's nuclear and industrial safety agency said Friday that it had procured six extra batteries and that the heavy batteries might be flown in by military helicopters.

What is happening now?

No one really seems to know. News reports indicate that pressure is building inside the reactors' containment buildings and is now about 50% greater than normal. That means the water is either boiling or at a sufficiently high temperature for it to be evaporating rapidly. News reports from the No. 2 plant say the water is boiling. Authorities are planning to vent some steam from the No. 1 plant into the atmosphere to relieve pressure inside the building. Otherwise, the pressure could build up so much that it would cause an explosion, which would be much more dangerous.

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[meow mix]

1. release valves broken, pressure rising, fuel rods exposed

from what ive gathered.

and a few nuke lovers stuggling with thier propaganda

[godai]

3. You won't give up posting that fuel rods are exposed. No evidence of this.

If that were true, they'd melt and there would be a definite 3 Mile Island type meltdown. Absolutely no reports of exposed rods. None.

Nuke lovers? Propaganda? If what you write were true, what's to be gained by denying it? The truth will soon come out.

Seems like you don't like nuclear power and you seem to want a meltdown. I don't.

[Mojorabbit]

6. Japanese tv is reporting fuel rods were exposed.

Also that cesium detected.

[NNadir]

2. No one really seems to know? Really? What do you know about broken gas lines in Japan?

Can we have fifty or sixty different threads on the topic?

[upi402]

4. High radiation levels detected around Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

That's from the crawler under CNN's coverage.
Anyone have a good link to wind current map site? Google has turned up little of use for me so far.

[applegrove]

5. Thanks for posting this. My brother is in Japan, 600 miles away from

all this ****. I feel a little better.