Nuclear explosion in Japan

[suityou01]

Ahem, so my 'best guess' is as follows:

1) It's not a PWR it's a BWR (Boiling Water Reactor). Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2) Primary circuit (the red bit) probably hasn't been breeched (yet), but vented gases have exploded.

3) The concern would be whether they can cool the reactor before the fuel melts.

It's all very impressive, whatever happens...

It is isn't it? It's surreal, like Hollywoodesque. Just does not compute.

Makes for entertaining telly though.

[cojak]

The expert guy on the news reckoned it could be fuel stores or something chemical, but probably not a building collapsing due to earthquake damage. It was a pretty big bang.

Yep, definately more of a pulverising than a collapsing, you could see the pressure wave...

[TimberWolf]

3) The concern would be whether they can cool the reactor before the fuel melts.

It's all very impressive, whatever happens...

Some better is news coming out is that the containment vessel is unlikely to become breached, despite the explosion. So it sounds as if they think it will cool down without blowing up.

[cojak]

It is isn't it? It's surreal, like Hollywoodesque. Just does not compute.

Makes for entertaining telly though.

It's like doctors watching St Jimmie's in my household, I can tell you...

[amcdonald]

This is a nightmare of surreal proportions. Record breaking earthquakes and tsunamis, nuclear reactors blowing up and now radioactive material raining from the sky. Land sea and air.

What next?

Godzilla comes in and starters eating the scientists ?

[TimberWolf]

Godzilla comes in and starters eating the scientists ?

More tsunamis by the sound of it.

[Board Game Geek]

If it does go in to serious meltdown, could it start burrowing its way down to the Earth's Core ? Or is that fantasy la-la land ?

Because if it could, I'd imagine it could take a long time to get there, but perhaps by sometime in 2012 it could arrive, at which point everything goes boom.

So, are we seeing the 2012 nutcase end of the world prophecy coming true ?

If, and even if it could burrow its way down, I'd expect millions of tons of lava to come spewing up and cover some of Japan, before it rapidly cooled and plugged itself anyway.

[AtW]

This is some serious tulip

The only good news is that Japan was preparing for something like this, hopefully help will arrive soon also as this is super serious stuff.

[doodab]

If it does go in to serious meltdown, could it start burrowing its way down to the Earth's Core ? Or is that fantasy la-la land ?

Because if it could, I'd imagine it could take a long time to get there, but perhaps by sometime in 2012 it could arrive, at which point everything goes boom.

So, are we seeing the 2012 nutcase end of the world prophecy coming true ?

La la land. It would just dissolve in the molten rock , if it even got that far.

China Syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More worrying would be the dispersal into the environment, although I suspect that the massive influx of saltwater has already spoiled quite a bit of arable land.

[Doggy Styles]

I blame the nano-sized black hole created at CERN recently, now slowly growing at the centre of the earth and starting to affect the tectonic plates.