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Originally Posted by Grimace
Also, I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that there are two plants. Even the people I know in Japan are saying there's problems with ONE nuclear plant, containing (I believe) 4 reactors. Three of the reactors were "live" in that they have fuel in them. The fourth was being used as storage of spent fuel.
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It is true that there are serious problems with one plant, Fukushima Daiichi. All four of its reactors are in trouble, some worse than others. Even the Number 4 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi, the one which is being used to store spent fuel rods, is in trouble because they are having problems keeping the spent fuel cool. But there have also been (less serious) problems with two other nuclear plants, Onagawa which has three reactors and suffered a radiation leak several days ago, and Tokai Daini which had a main cooling pump failure but has been kept under control once auxiliary cooling pumps were brought online.
I'm not trying to be a know-it-all here, its just that monitoring the news is my bread and butter and I'm probably exposed to more news and current affairs than most people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grimace
In terms of using sea water to cool, consider this. If they don't use seawater to cool the reactors, then the cores melt down and the seawater is contaminated anyway as well as a lot of land around the area. So the alternative of not using the sea water is much worse.
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No argument here. Just pointing out that there is no "good" outcome at this point. Just varying degrees of bad.