I've just reviewed the transcript posted by the Union of Concerned Scientists for Monday's teleconference. It's fascinating and lengthy as one might expect.

First, the better news. They evidently believe that conventional but improvised cooling has been now restored to all the reactors on site and all their cooling pools. The reactors are now being cooled with fresh water but most of the spent fuel pools are still being cooled with sea water. But temperatures are stabilizing.

Unfortunately, whatever storage space they have for radioactively contaminated water is overwhelmed so that it is spreading throughout the turbine halls, the tunnels underneath, through various conduits, out into the bay or onto the grounds.

They're not sure where the non-volatile plutonium came from; it could have come from either the spent fuel pools or the reactor vessels when liquid was vented or escaped through a breach. They didn't mention the explosion of Unit 3 as a possible source.

Here are two answers to reporters' questions which sum up the state of the disaster at this point:

"REPORTER: My question would be, given some of the misinformation we had this weekend and the struggle that you're having with the data that you get, are you getting more or less sure about what really is going on there?

MR. LOCHBAUM: This is Dave Lochbaum.

I think we're pretty sure there's a disaster going on. It's the nature of the disaster, how the materials are getting into the various buildings that's not so clear, whether it's damage from the spent fuel pool or damage from the reactor core. But in terms of what needs to be done, that's somewhat irrelevant.

There's a lot of radioactivity outside of containment barriers that's posing a threat to both workers and the public that needs to be addressed as the top priority. There was progress made, as I mentioned earlier, on getting more normal injection of fresh water into the reactor cores, but that's more of a detail phase. There's been clear signs of damage done to date that aren't going to go away any time soon, that will continue to pose a hazard to both workers and the public, and a lot needs to be done to regain control over that material and limit, to the extent possible, how much of it gets out from the site.

REPORTER: I guess as a question, it's sort of hard for us out here to understand if things are getting better or worse, you know, if the list of things that needs to be done -- that's a good point that we sort of end up losing in the weeds, but if that list of what needs to be done is getting longer or shorter or if it's to be expected given the nature of this disaster.

MR. LOCHBAUM: Yeah. I think -- this is Dave Lochbaum again.

I think the good news is, you know, absent any further casualties, they've pretty much limited how much fuel damage has occurred to what has already happened. They have regained control of water injection on all six spent fuel pools or seven spent fuel pools and are putting water into the reactor cores on Units 1, 2, and 3. So, whatever damage has been done seems to have been done. Things could get worse. They could have some more equipment failures that lead to more damage of the fuel, but it seems like the fuel damage to date has already been done.

The bad news is that there's a lot of fuel damage that has occurred that's caused the release of a lot of radioactivity into some damaged structures, and that radioactivity has gotten to places that it shouldn't be, like the turbine buildings. So, therefore, even though the amount of fuel damage may have been retarded and there won't be any more in the future, quite a lot has happened to date, and that poses a challenge to make sure that as little as possible of that large amount of radioactivity that's been released, at least into the building, gets released into the environment. That's going to be a challenge.

So, I think the phase of the accident has moved from core damage, release of material, into management of the material that's been released or discharged from the damaged fuel."

But please review the entire transcript so you can be as impressed and depressed as I.

Oh, I got a PM from Joe Offer. He still doesn't think it's appropriate to change the thread title. I respectfully disagree.

Charley Noble