The general tone of Sandy's post is reassuring with regard to the possibility of a nuclear explosion at the Fukushima complex. That is the conventional wisdom. And we all hope it is correct.

However, Sandy's dead wrong with regard to nuclear fission, which is exactly what nuclear plants are designed to do in a controlled fashion to heat water, produce steam, and run turbines to generate electricity.

I'm not finding any clear information this morning on the details of what happened in the explosion reported last night at Unit 2, just conflicting reports. Evidently the fire was put out at the spent fuel in Unit 4 but unless the water flow is maintained in all six spent fuel pools at the Fukushima complex there will be additional fires and high level nuclear waste escaping into the surrounding downwind environment.

Nothing new at NIRS this morning and very little at Wikipedia Fukushima.

Charley Noble