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Comment by hartror | Hacker News Reader

1. The building on 4 is on fire, not the spent fuel rods.

2. The hydrogen explosion on 2 may have damaged containment.

Well, at least one of the 2 possibilities is closer to the worst case since radioactivity levels are 500x (400 mill-sievert, from 800 u-sievert) what they were a few hours ago.

Well, just cross your fingers and pray, it may get worse, if you are lucky. I get the distinct feeling that you want there to be a nuclear catastrophe....most detractors are content with imagining (and genuinely believing) that there have been several catastrophes in our past. But you seem drawn to want an actual catastrophe.

Am I wrong? If you could somehow magically snap your fingers and make nuclear power 100% safe, would you do it?

Where are you getting the milli from? Kyodo reports 8000 micro sievert. So it's an ~5.5x increase from the previous high-water-mark of 1,500 microsievert.

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/78063.html

Japanese chief secretary's press conference which I was watching on NHK. NHK repeated the number several times. Found a press report here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-14/japan-appeals-for-i...

Thanks! I am not sure what reports to believe anymore...

asahi.com also reported a similar number (400 mili sievert near reactor number 4, believed to follow fire at that location): http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0315/TKY201103150154.ht...

Stop it! This is the proper time to panic and disregard any empirical evidence. The Sky-Is-Falling crowd has needed this release of pure panicgasm for a long time, don't ruin it for them.

I have no way of knowing if their report is accurate, but this is what the NYT says on #1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16nuclear.html):

That fourth reactor had been turned off and was under refurbishment for months before the earthquake and tsunami hit the plant on Friday. But the plant contains spent fuel rods that were removed from the reactor, and experts guessed that the pool containing those rods had run dry, allowing the rods to overheat and catch fire.

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