Here's the latest update prepared by the Nuclear Information Resource Center:

UPDATE 12:30 pm, Monday, March 14, 2011. According to our colleagues in Japan, Tokyo
Electric Power states that Fukushima Daiichi-2 "has again lost its coolant (sea water was
pumped in but is dropping). They cannot ease the reactor pressure because the relief valve is stuck closed. Air dose rate on site (outside the reactor building) was 3,130 at around 9:30pm."
We believe the 3,130 figure means 3130 MicroSievert/hour, which would be highest reading yet recorded—about 310 millirems/hour. For comparison, the U.S. EPA allowable dose to a member of the public from a single reactor is 25 millirems/year, the U.S. NRC's allowable dose is 100 millirems/year from all nuclear sources.

From the regular media reports it appears that the Japanese have been able to resume pumping saltwater into Unit 2 at Fukashima, the plant where fuels rods were being exposed. That is better news in a dire situation.

I've watched Wolf Blitzer get outmaneuvered by an expert from a nuclear industry lobby just now. He claims that US nuclear plants in earthquake zones are built to standards appropriate to the conditions where they are located. Well, that was also true of Fukushima and the other troubled nuclear complexes in Japan, and the standards have proved inadequate. His back-up position was that we need to learn lessons from this event and move on with a new generation of improved nuclear plants. Well, there's something to be said for that, if the nuclear industry is willing to shut down all their existing plants for recertification. But Blitzer winged it to another aspect of the disaster.

Other "experts" are advocating fusion plants, a theoretically interesting concept but unproven as operational systems.

At this point I'd entertain the concept of switching to whale oil as an alternative (hey, whales, I'm only joking!), before plunking for fusion.

Charley Noble