Getting back to my worst case scenario of Unit 3 exploding and triggering Units 1, 2, and 4 in a grander conflagration, everyone should know I'm going well beyond my zone of confidence. I fully expect that Units 1, 2, and 3 are already partially melted down and may complete the process to full meltdown. That will be messy enough locally. But what might happen next is not that clear. Sure, I can envision the melted fuel rods eating their way through the reactor vessel as they did at Three Mile Island and pooling in the bottom on the reactor, mixed with whatever they came in contact with. And, yes, they could eventually get into the ground water and the nearby cove and decimate anything living there. But I'm uncertain if the melted fuel would actually burn and create a deadly plume that would threaten large areas of Japan. Something like that happened at Chernobyl but it was a byproduct of a Hydrogen explosion igniting the graphite surrounding the fuel rods. We don't have the graphite at Fukushima.

Anyone else have any clues what might happen next?

I've already sent a message to the Union of Concerned Scientists. I don't know if they take weekends off.

Charley Noble