Radioactive lava

We have achieved meltdown.

"It won't come out as one big glob; it'll come out like lava, and that is good because it's easier to cool."
-Richard Lahey

First Fukushima Suicide

This from EX SKF blog

32 years later

Spent nuclear fuel pools aren't sustainable

"I don’t think anyone is even thinking about the issue of loss of availability of electrical generation and its impact on our ability to maintain spent nuclear fuel pools. Everyone assumes that we will continue to have our current system forever. We know that this cannot be true, but I doubt that anyone is willing to face this issue and plan for it."
-Gail Tverberg

Latest flyover video of Fukushima Nuke Plant

Radiation is good for you?

When Bill O'Reilly is the voice of reason in a conversation, you know the other person is an idiot.

Real-time radiation readings in Japan

Here's a nice site with prevailing radiation readings all over Japan.

It's "serious"

Japan's Nuclear Regulatory Commission has finally acknowledged what many of us have known for two weeks now: the Fukushima event is worse than 3 Mile Island, but not yet as bad as Chernobyl. Emphasis on not yet.
News coming out of Japan over the past few days has been dire at best. Tokyo has no safe tap water OR bottled water. Eesh. Good luck ladies and gentlemen.

Here is a very informative update from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Here's a link to the TEPCO webcam for those of you who are more visually inclined.

Reuters has put up a live blog with constant updates, so stay tuned to this very "serious" situation.

****Correction*******
Reuters is closing the live blog, but will open it back up if the situation warrants, which I think we can assume that it will. They have put up something similar on their facebook page.

Allegedly, we're "safe"

Those witty Frenchmen...

This entry from the Al Jazeera blog today is slightly entertaining:

2:34am
A French parliamentary hearing called to discuss the worsening nuclear crisis in Japan has been suspended in uproar - in a spat over a parked car.

As ministers outlined France's response to the explosions, part-meltdowns and radiation leaks at Fukushima nuclear plant, independent member of parliament Maxime Gremetz stormed into the committee room to complain his car was blocked.

"That's enough! This is unworthy!" science committee chairman Claude Birraux protested, amid shouts from MPs, enraged by the timing of the interruption.

After disrupting the hearing - screened on live television - for a second time, Gremetz was ordered to get the car registration number. Committee chairman Birraux told him, "With Japanese people risking their lives today, don't come here and be a pain in the neck with your story about badly parked cars."

Energy minister Eric Besson said he was sure the offending vehicle did not belong either to him, or Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, telling the committee, "If it was either of our cars, I am sure the chauffeurs would be sitting in the front."

BOOM!

Japan's Nuclear Nightmare

"It's clear we are at Level 6, that's to say we're at a level in between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl."
-Andre Claude Lacoste, president of France's nuclear safety authority

But hey, maybe the rest of the world can learn from this. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has suspended plans to extend the life of her country's nuclear power plants. Yeah, ya think? Thanks for taking the lead on this Angela, someone needed to state the obvious.
Where else is electricity gonna come from as oil prices continue to skyrocket?

Ah, post-modern society, it was so nice to know you.

The next day China announced that they are rethinking new construction of nuclear reactors due to increasing public skepticism. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also chimed in on the matter:

What's happening in Japan raises questions about the costs and the risks associated with nuclear power, but we have to answer those. We get 20 per cent of our energy right now in the United States from nuclear power.
-Hillary Clinton