Official: 'We see the possibility of a meltdown' (CNN)

[jpak]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.quake.nuclear.failure/?hpt=T1

Tokyo (CNN) -- A meltdown may be under way at one of Fukushima Daiichi's nuclear power reactors in northern Japan, an official with Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told CNN Sunday.

"There is a possibility, we see the possibility of a meltdown," said Toshihiro Bannai, director of the agency's international affairs office, in a telephone interview from the agency's headquarters in Tokyo. "At this point, we have still not confirmed that there is an actual meltdown, but there is a possibility."

Though he said engineers have been unable to get close enough to the core to know what's going on, he based his conclusion on the fact that they measured radioactive cesium and radioactive iodine in the air Saturday night.

"What we have seen is only the slight indication from a monitoring post of cesium and iodine," he said. Since then, he said, plant officials have injected sea water and boron into the plant in an effort to cool its nuclear fuel.

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[godai]

1. dup

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4767922&mesg_id=4767922

[jpak]

4. Nope - this is the full CNN report - there was an earlier report of a meltdown this AM

yup

[CountAllVotes]

2. these "officials" don't like the word meltdown

but that seems to be what we are dealing with here, a NUCLEAR MELTDOWN for God's sake. :nuke:

:dem:

[FBaggins]

3. Can you blame them?

They've got good reason to avoid using it.

"Meltdown" could be anything from relatively minor core damage all the way up to the entire core sitting in a molten pool at the bottom of the containment vessel. And then you've got a whole range of potential damage to that containment ranging from essentially nothing all way up to total failure.

IOW, "potential meltdown" covers a long range from, say, 1 to 5,000 where 1 means no human even gets a dose equivelent to an extra x-ray, and 5,000 means a catastrophe (still not "chernobyl", but Japan has a pretty high population density).

If you use a word thinking that right now you're looking at something between a 1 and a 250 on my imaginary scale, there are still people while will "hear" a warning that a 5,000 event (or worse) is under way.

And since this is the country with the greatest experience getting hosed with nuclear devices... they probably have their fair share of people who will hear it as a 5,000.