There may be some progress in mitigating the fuel meltdown and risk of a fuel fire at some of the reactors at the Fukushima-1 nuclear complex, after watching the morning news on CNN and NSNBC but it's really hard to judge without having a systematic review, reactor by reactor, and no one is doing that. It's possible that no one is in position to do that.

I expect that even when electricity is available on-site, little of the machinery at reactors 1, 2, 3, and 4, will be functional after being damaged by explosions, irradiated, and sprayed with salt water. But electricity would be very useful for powering new external pumps, and new monitoring equipment. Evidently full power has been restored to reactors 5 and 6 which are at the other end of the complex.

I certainly agree that even if there is no further damage (which seems unlikely to me) it will be ten years or more before the radiation damage at the site and in the downwind area is mitigated. Some areas may need to be permanently classified as a "dead zone."

In addition to radioactive iodide, cesium, plutonium, there are dozens of radioactive isotopes that could be ejected in a smoke plume from the plant complex if there were additional fires, and most of them are harmful to life for longer than 10,000 years.

Charley Noble